Rana Fifteen (Scott Lynch)
A feast of Turkish delights at Park Slope’s new Rana Fifteen
A home-cooked, after-hours family feast becomes the main attraction from the FOB team, with a gloriously gluttonous twist
Chef Armando Litiatco has been feeding this part of Brooklyn his family recipes for Filipino barbecue for about seven years at FOB, a popular Carroll Gardens neighborhood spot.
FOB co-owner and Litiatco’s partner Ahmet Kiranbay, who hails from the western part of Turkey by the Aegean Sea, loves Filipino food too, of course, but as he tells Brooklyn Magazine, “I always wanted to do my family recipes too. Every year my mother, Rana, visits us from Turkey and she’s cooking in our kitchen — we never serve just one thing, we put out mezzes, and salads, and a main course, and dessert — and Armando’s like, ‘Oh this is so good.'”
So for the past two years the duo have been working on ways to transform that classic Kiranbay Turkish family feast into a restaurant. And when the former Bella Gioia space opened up across the Gowanus Canal from FOB, on Fourth Avenue in Park Slope, Kiranbay and Litiaco took the plunge.
Rana Fifteen opened a couple of weeks ago with a menu of familiar Aegean favorites — fava beans and labneh to start, grilled octopus and lamb chops as entrees — but with a glorious twist: the “Rana’s Table” option. For $39 or $44 per person, your party of two or more gets samplings of all eight appetizers, plus four mezzes, plus two sides, plus one entree, plus dessert. It’s a lot of food. And a lot of fun when almost everything hits the table at once.
Twelve of the 15 dishes you get with the ‘Rana’s Table’ meal (Scott Lynch)
There wasn’t a clunker in the bunch. The atom labneh is as silky as ice cream and jacked up with chili and garlic. The mussels come stuffed with chewy grains and seasoned according to Kiranbay’s uncle’s closely-guarded recipe. And the lightly-battered fried calamari is given a nice little boost by dribbles of spicy isot (dried chili pepper) sauce.
There are plump garlic shrimp, some good puffy pita, pickled okra, olives and feta, a fish roe dip, Kiranbay’s aunt’s fava dip, and a bright arugula salad loaded with fennel, oranges, and seared halloumi. The only choice you have to make is which entree you want to share.
Orange glazed octopus. $32 a la carte; $44 a person with fourteen other dishes as part of the Rana’s Table dinner (Scott Lynch)
Just $39 a person gets you all of the above plus roasted chicken with yogurt dip, or a good-looking Iskender steak, or a platter of stuffed eggplant. Add $10 to your tab and you can dine on a pile of Litiaco’s chili- and cherry-glazed lamb chops, or a pair of octopus tentacles, citrus infused and charred to a crisp.
Grilled lamb chops with chili and cherry. $36 a la carte; $44 per person with fourteen other dishes as part of the Rana’s Table dinner (Scott Lynch)
In Turkey they call meals like this a “locksmith table,” Kiranbay’s says. “Everything comes at the same time, you start drinking, you start eating, it opens your mouth, and opens your heart. That’s what we want to do here.” The liquor license is still pending, so get a Turkish coffee with dessert. The room is pretty and comfortable. You’ll want to linger.
Coming soon: the Rana Fifteen brunch, served in the same 15-dishes-covering-the-table style as dinner, but with breakfast foods.
Rana Fifteen is located at 209 Fourth Avenue, at the corner of Union Street, and is currently open on Sunday and Monday from 5 to 9 p.m., on Wednesday and Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m., and on Friday and Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m. (347-599-1525)
