Oh, the trials of vegetarians in foreign lands! I remember going out to eat with Jen in Korea; the word “vegetarian,” even in translation, was often completely useless—most waitresses used it to indicate that a dish contained both meat AND vegetables—and fish broth was ubiquitous, even in dishes that were otherwise 100% vegetable. I’m sad to report that vegetarians in Turkey are in for trouble as well, at least if they come to our restaurant. That yogurt soup you ordered, described in the menu as “prepared with rice and seasoned with dried mint”? Yup, it’s mostly chicken. And those “stuffed vine leaves dressed with olive oil”…filled to bursting with ground beef. I think the greatest travesty is probably the peravu, “Goreme-style cheese ravioli with tomato sauce.” This is just a straight-up lie. The peravu are in fact stuffed with onions and lamb, smothered in a chokingly thick garlic yogurt sauce and then doused with red pepper-infused oil. So watch out, all you parents of picky eaters who think you’ve finally found something simple that your kid will eat—they will not! They will balk! Then there was this…a week or so ago I was taking the order for a family that was very concerned that their meal not contain any lamb. The mother, who was doing all the talking, would say, “One order of the grilled chicken and rice—with no lamb, please. That has no lamb, right? And the okra with beef—but no lamb. Without the lamb!” I thought she was being a little unnecessarily cautious (or course the grilled chicken doesn’t have any lamb…), but the last thing she ordered was one of the woodstove roasted chicken kebabs. It was only at the last moment, as I was relaying her order to Ibrahim, that I remembered that at the top of each kebab, lamb and chicken alike, Ibrahim plops a giant, white cube of what was described to me as “lamb butter.” Over the course of the roasting process, the lamb butter melts down to cover all the meat and vegetables (presumably what makes these kebabs so incredibly delicious). So I found myself in the position of declaring, “One chicken kebab—with no lamb!” This caused a bit of an uproar; I had to be very insistent and Ibrahim was very reluctant. Anyway, anonymous non-lamb-eating mother, I take back all my exasperated thoughts—yours is clearly a paranoia born from experience.