26.02.10

Arzu Esendemir, who opened Flatbread Grill with her two sisters, prepares a Mediterranean salad.

At first gander, Flatbread Grill — with murals, high ceiling, chatty lunchtime stuff — looks like just the latest summing-up to the laptop/latte cool-cafe scene.

But look closer. There are homemade breads in a display case next to the table. Breads you may not have heard of. Lavash, a tortilla-like flatbread. Piatta, a fluffier interpretation of a pita. And thumb bread, a thick, chewy and thoroughly unconquerable creation that may have you wishing your car came equipped with a plug-in toaster oven.

The restaurant, which opened two years ago in a former Carvel, is owned by three sisters, Gonca, Fusun and Arzu Esendemir. All three worked at Turkish restaurants in Hoboken and Bayonne owned by their parents, but Flatbread Grill is not so much Turkish as Mediterranean.

“We wanted to take stock breads and recipes we grew up with and make them accessible,’’ Gonca Esendemir says. Which explains thumb bread, named for the way much Turkish bread is molded, and the swapping of traditional Turkish yogurt/cucumber dressing for the more in Middle Eastern tahini or Greek tzatziki.

Source: The Star-Ledger - NJ.com

by Joshua Lurie

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