New North Side Restaurant Will Celebrate Turkish Cuisine

Planned site for Istanbul Grill, 9709 W. Appleton Ave. Photo from Google Maps. Mediterranean is a common label for restaurant cuisine. For diners, it may conjure notions of kebabs, pita, shawarma and falafel. Yet the Mediterranean stretches across the maritime borders of 22 countries on three continents—from Greece in Europe to Libya in Africa to Lebanon in the Middle East—encompassing a wide range of culinary traditions shaped by distinct cultures, ingredients and preparation styles. Calling them all Mediterranean groups unique culinary traditions into a homogeneous category, often obscuring the cultural or ethnic ancestry behind a restaurant s dishes. Rovshan Mamedov and his wife Milana Mamedova are taking a different approach. They plan to open Istanbul Grill at 9709 W. Appleton Ave. and anchor the restaurant to a specific country in the Mediterranean: Turkey. We chose the name Istanbul Grill because we wanted people to immediately understand that our restaurant specializes in Tu