Turkish Food in St. Louis: Iskender Off a Truck, Kunefe on Grand
Revised November 5, 2026
What to order from a Turkish restaurant in St. Louis?
Order a mixed grill for two plus one meze plate and warm bread. That covers adana kebab, chicken shish, kofte, rice, and grilled peppers, with hummus or ezme to start. Add ayran to drink and share baklava at the end. If the kitchen lists iskender, one of you should order it instead.
Keep reading ↓Toasted pita on the bottom, gone soft where the tomato hits it. Doner shaved thin and stacked on top. A cold spoon of yogurt on one side, green chilies on the other, and then the butter sauce, poured hot enough that you hear it. That’s iskender. Most people who say they don’t know Turkish food have never had a plate of it, and once you have, the gyro you grabbed last month starts to feel like a rough draft.
Here’s the St. Louis part nobody puts in a guide. One of the easiest places in town to order iskender is a truck: O’Yess Doner Kebab. Its own site says “We move around St. Louis” and tells you to check its Instagram and Facebook for the day’s spot, and its menu lists iskender as doner kebab over pita with yogurt, butter sauce, tomatoes, green chilies and house seasoning. The meat is “100% certified halal,” and the truck’s own story says everything is flame-grilled fresh to order. So one of the best first Turkish plates in the city may come to you through a truck window.
Want a table and a slow evening instead? Sheesh Restaurant at 3226 S. Grand Blvd. calls its own menu “wonderful Turkish cuisine such as Iskender kebabs, stuffed grape leaves, kibbeh and Musakka.” Its posted hours run 5pm-10pm and it is closed Wednesdays. Order the cheese künafe at the end, shredded pastry, ghee, white cheese, syrup and pistachios, and know what the menu warns you: it takes about 15 minutes. Order it when the kebabs land, and it reaches the table hot, right as the plates go back.
That’s worth texting to the friend who keeps saying they’ll try Turkish someday. Below: what Turkish food actually is, what it tastes like, how it differs from Greek, and the safe first order for two when you do sit down at a table. Truck or dining room, the names on the menu look hard and the menu runs long. Relax. A pide is bread with stuff on it.
What to order from a Turkish restaurant in St. Louis?
Order a mixed grill for two plus one meze plate and warm bread. That covers adana kebab, chicken shish, kofte, rice, and grilled peppers, with hummus or ezme to start. Add ayran to drink and share baklava at the end. If the kitchen lists iskender, one of you should order it instead.
That’s the safe first order, and it works on nearly any Turkish menu. Why the mixed grill? Because it’s a sampler in disguise. You get a skewer of spiced ground lamb, a skewer of chicken, maybe a kofte patty, all charred over flame and set on rice beside a blistered pepper and a wedge of tomato. Nothing on that plate is hot. Nothing needs explaining. The meze keeps the bread busy while the grill works. Skip the soup on a first visit unless it’s red lentil, which is worth it.
What Turkish food actually is
Turkish food is the home cooking of Anatolia, the wide peninsula that makes up most of modern Turkey, filtered through the palace kitchens of the Ottoman Empire. That’s the short answer. That empire was enormous, and its cooks picked up ideas everywhere they went and sent them back out again. So a Turkish menu sits right where the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Balkans, and Central Asia overlap.
You can taste the map. Olive oil, lemon, and grilled fish come from the Aegean coast. Bulgur, lamb, hot pepper, and pistachio come from the southeast, near Syria. Yogurt and tiny stuffed dumplings came west with the Turkic nomads, long before the empire. Read the Sheesh menu with that map in mind: hummus and baba ghanouj up top, a long row of kebabs below, ayran and Turkish coffee to drink.
One thing it is not: a spinoff of Greek or Lebanese food, even though the three trade dishes constantly. Turkish cooking has its own center of gravity, and that center is yogurt, bread, and meat over a fire.
What does Turkish food taste like?
Smoky, tangy, and mild. That’s the honest three-word answer. Grilled lamb and chicken bring the smoke. Yogurt, lemon, and sumac bring the tang. And almost nothing on the table is hot the way a Sichuan or Thai kitchen means it. Turkish cooks build heat with a dried red pepper called pul biber, and they mostly leave it in a shaker on the table so you can add your own.
Vegetables do more work here than in most meat-heavy cuisines. Eggplant gets roasted until it collapses, then dressed with garlic and oil or folded into a smoky puree. Tomatoes and peppers show up grilled, raw, and chopped into a chunky relish called ezme. Bulgur, the cracked wheat, stands in for rice half the time and has a nutty chew rice doesn’t. Pomegranate molasses, sour and sticky, sneaks into salad dressings. Parsley is a vegetable here, not a garnish.
Layered, but not loud. Think of adana as a burger that went to a better school. If you know Persian food, you’ll notice the shared rice and yogurt; our guide to what Persian food is and what to try in St. Louis covers that cousin. Turkish plates run smokier and less sweet-and-sour than Persian ones.
What is a typical Turkish menu?
Most Turkish menus in St. Louis follow one shape: cold and hot meze up top, breads and pides in the middle, a long kebab section, a few home-style dishes, then sweets and drinks. Pick what to share first, then one main each, then decide about dessert when you see how full you are.
Meze, pide, and lahmacun
Meze are small plates, and a table usually orders three or four to pass around. Hummus, yes, but also haydari (thick yogurt with garlic and dill), ezme (that tomato-pepper relish), and patlican salatasi (smoky mashed eggplant). Pide is a boat-shaped flatbread baked with cheese, ground meat, or sucuk on top and sliced into strips; think of it as the Turkish pizza. Lahmacun is thinner and rounder, a paper-crisp disk smeared with spiced ground lamb. Squeeze lemon on it, pile on parsley and onion, roll it up, eat it like a wrap.
Kebabs, doner, and kofte
Adana kebab is hand-minced lamb with red pepper pressed onto a wide flat skewer and grilled. Urfa is the same thing without the heat. Shish is cubed meat on a stick. Kofte are small grilled patties of seasoned ground beef or lamb. Doner is the big rotating cone of stacked meat, shaved off in ribbons and served on rice, in bread, or in a wrap. Iskender, the one to remember, is doner laid over cubes of toasted pide, soaked in tomato sauce, then finished with browned butter and a heap of yogurt.
Manti, kumpir, and borek
These are the home-style dishes, and they don’t appear on every menu, so order them when you see them. Manti are tiny lamb dumplings, sometimes no bigger than a fingernail, buried under garlic yogurt and a drizzle of pepper butter. Kumpir is a huge baked potato mashed with butter and cheese inside its own skin, then loaded with whatever toppings you point at. Borek is layered phyllo baked around spinach, cheese, or ground meat, cut in squares or coiled like a rope.
Baklava, kunefe, tea, coffee, and ayran
Turkish baklava is pistachio-forward and less syrupy than the Greek kind. Kunefe is the dessert to pick if you only pick one: shredded phyllo baked around soft, stretchy cheese, soaked in syrup, served hot so the cheese pulls. Tea comes black and strong in a small tulip-shaped glass; Sheesh also pours Turkish apple tea. Turkish coffee is thick and unfiltered; let the grounds settle and leave the last sip. Ayran is salted, thinned yogurt, cold and a little foamy. It’s the drink that belongs with kebab.
Lake weekend ahead? Read how to find a swimsuit that fits.
Is Turkish food similar to Greek food?
Yes and no. Both grew up under the same Ottoman roof for centuries, so they share a deep pantry: phyllo, eggplant, grilled lamb, stuffed grape leaves, yogurt, honey-soaked pastry. Eat at a Greek table and a Turkish one in the same week and you’ll recognize half the plates. The differences live in the seasoning and the details.
Greek cooking leans on oregano, lemon, olive oil, and feta. Turkish cooking leans on red pepper, sumac, cumin, and mint, with more yogurt on the plate and less cheese. Doner and gyro are cousins. Doner is the older Turkish form, usually lamb or a lamb-beef blend, shaved thin and served over rice or in bread with tomato and onion. Gyro is the Greek adaptation, often pork back home and a pressed beef-lamb loaf in the United States, tucked into pita with tzatziki. Same idea. Different jacket.
Baklava is the argument that never ends. The Turkish version is denser and built around pistachio; the Greek one usually goes walnut and heavier on honey. Want to try the Greek side first? Our local’s guide to the best Greek and Mediterranean food in St. Louis is the place to start. Keep score if you like. Turkish usually wins on bread. Greek usually wins on fish.
What does a typical Turkish breakfast consist of?
A Turkish breakfast, called kahvalti, is a table full of small plates rather than one big one. White cheese, olives, sliced tomato and cucumber, honey with a slab of clotted cream called kaymak, jam, boiled or fried eggs, and a basket of bread. Tea gets poured without pause. It’s meant to last an hour, and nobody hurries it.
The hot dishes are where it gets good. Menemen is eggs scrambled slowly with tomato, green pepper, and sometimes onion, served soft in the pan it cooked in. Sucuk is a spiced beef sausage, sliced and fried until the fat renders, often with an egg cracked over the top. Simit is the sesame-crusted bread ring stacked by the register, chewy inside and crunchy out, made for tearing and dragging through honey and kaymak.
Not every Turkish restaurant serves breakfast, so check the posted hours before you drive in from Herculaneum for it. When it’s on, the kahvalti spread for two is a dozen tastes on one bill, and the price varies by kitchen. Bring an appetite. Skip lunch.
What is the etiquette for eating Turkish food?
Bread is a utensil. Tea is a welcome, not an upsell. Meze belong to the whole table. And “afiyet olsun” is what you say when food arrives, or what the cook says to you; it means roughly “may it do you good.” Those four things cover almost everything a first-timer needs. The rest is common sense.
Bread and hands
Tear the bread; don’t cut it. Use pieces to scoop meze, to drag through the juices on a kebab plate, and to wrap a bite of doner with onion and parsley. Lahmacun gets rolled and eaten by hand. Pide gets picked up by the strip. A fork is fine for rice and salad. The bread just does a better job on everything else.
Tea, sharing, and the check
When tea shows up after the meal without anyone ordering it, that’s hospitality, not a line on the bill. Take it, or say thank you and decline once. Meze go in the middle of the table, so order with the group in mind. Splitting a big plate like iskender or a mixed grill is normal. If the owner stops by to ask how everything was, that’s normal too, and a real answer beats a polite one. Tipping follows the usual St. Louis rules.
How to find Turkish food around the St. Louis metro
Turkish kitchens in the metro tend to hide inside bigger labels. Some list as Mediterranean, some as Middle Eastern, some as halal, and a few as a bakery or cafe with a kebab menu in the back. Search all four. The international corridors are densest; our South Grand guide to the international food district maps one.
How do you pick between two? Ask the kitchen what they actually cook. Do they build their own doner or buy the cone? Is the adana hand-minced? Is the bread baked in-house? A kitchen that’s proud of the answer will tell you in detail. Then match that against what you want. A slow dinner with meze and tea calls for a place with real tables and a posted meze list. Doner on a Tuesday? A counter spot will do. Prices vary by kitchen, so read the posted menu instead of trusting a guess.
Online menus go stale. Call. Or walk in and ask what’s good that day. In our experience the answer is whatever the person at the grill is proudest of, and that’s the plate you want.
Armenian menus sit right next door to this one and confuse a lot of first-timers - here is what Armenian food is and what to order in St. Louis.
Hungry now? Browse Turkish restaurants around St. Louis on St Louis Near Me Directory, check each kitchen’s posted menu for iskender or a weekend kahvalti, and bring someone to split the meze with.
If you’re the kebab counter, the pide oven or the truck with a line at the window, this part is for you. Own a spot like this? The next customer is already asking a phone where to find iskender tonight. Make sure your name is the one it answers with: list your kitchen and get more customers through the door.
Frequently asked questions
What is a typical Turkish menu?
Cold and hot meze at the top, breads like pide and lahmacun in the middle, a long kebab section with adana, urfa, shish, kofte, doner, and iskender, then a few home-style dishes such as manti or borek, and finally baklava, kunefe, tea, coffee, and ayran. Pick two or three meze to share, one main each, and decide on dessert once you see how the portions run.
What does Turkish food taste like?
Smoky, tangy, and mild. Lamb and chicken over charcoal give the smoke. Yogurt, lemon, and sumac give the tang. Eggplant, tomato, parsley, and bulgur fill out the plate, with pomegranate molasses and mint showing up in salads. Heat comes from a dried red pepper called pul biber that usually sits on the table in a shaker, so the base dish stays gentle and you decide how far to push it.
Are Turkish foods spicy?
Mostly no. Turkish cooking is seasoned, not hot. Cumin, sumac, mint, and paprika do most of the work, and the red pepper flakes that add real heat are often served on the side. Adana kebab and ezme are the two menu items with noticeable warmth, and even those land closer to a mild salsa than a hot wing. Urfa kebab is the no-heat version of adana. Want more fire? Ask for pul biber.
Is Turkish food similar to Greek food?
Similar enough that you’ll recognize half the plates, since both spent centuries under the Ottoman Empire and share phyllo, eggplant, grilled lamb, stuffed grape leaves, and honey pastries. The differences sit in the seasoning. Greek food leans on oregano, lemon, olive oil, and feta. Turkish food leans on red pepper, sumac, cumin, and a lot more yogurt. Doner and gyro are cousins, and the two baklavas differ in nut and sweetness.
What is the etiquette for eating Turkish food?
Tear the bread and use it to scoop meze and mop up kebab juices. Order meze for the whole table and share them. When tea arrives after the meal without being ordered, that’s a welcome, so accept it or decline once with thanks. Say afiyet olsun when food lands, or just smile when the cook says it to you. Lahmacun is rolled and eaten by hand. Tipping follows the usual St. Louis rules.
What does a typical Turkish breakfast consist of?
Kahvalti is a spread of small plates: white cheese, olives, sliced tomato and cucumber, honey with clotted cream called kaymak, jam, eggs, and a basket of bread or simit. Hot dishes include menemen, eggs cooked slowly with tomato and pepper, and sucuk, a spiced beef sausage fried until crisp. Tea is poured the whole time. Not every kitchen serves it, so check the posted hours first.
Are gyros Turkish or Greek?
Gyros are Greek, but they descend from Turkish doner. Doner is the older dish: stacked lamb or a lamb-beef blend roasted on a vertical spit and shaved thin, served over rice or in bread with tomato and onion. Greek cooks adapted it, often with pork at home and a pressed beef-lamb loaf in the United States, and wrapped it in pita with tzatziki. Order doner at a Turkish restaurant and you’re eating the original.
What is Turkey’s signature dish?
Ask ten Turks and you’ll get ten answers, but kebab is the one most people land on, with doner and adana as the two forms known around the world. Iskender, doner over toasted pide with tomato sauce, browned butter, and yogurt, is the plate many consider the peak of it. Manti and baklava have their champions too. For a first visit in St. Louis, iskender or a mixed grill is the safest showcase.
Written by a dedicated team of St. Louis locals who live, work, and play right here in the St. Louis metro. Founder Lane Forman and team are committed to building the region’s most trusted directory by verifying listings and connecting local businesses with loyal customers across Missouri and Illinois.