Hayal Kurdish Cigkofte Restaurant‘s Cigkofte Portion, $12.99, 860 Wilson Ave.
The dish
This sharable appetizer is what started owner Sukran Aksoy’s food business six years ago, when she was doing catering gigs for friends, family and community events for the local Kurdish community. Pronounced “chee-kofta”, these meatballs are typically made with raw beef, but for food safety reasons Aksoy opted for the still-traditional, meatless iteration, ditching the meat and instead blending bulgur, tomato paste, onions, garlic and aromatics like isot, a smoky, slightly fruity chili pepper grown in Turkey.
It has the consistency of tartare but with the tender nuttiness of bulgur wheat, a hit of umami from the tomato, a pinch of lemony tartness and a bit of heat from the chilies. Aksoy goes light on the isot by default to make the dish more approachable, but you can ask for it to be full-fire if desired. To eat, place the hand-shaped veggie balls on a lettuce wrap and top with the accompanying pickled red cabbage, pickles or (really) spicy yellow peppers, then squeeze a bit of lemon on top.
The restaurant
Named after Aksoy’s nickname meaning “dream” in Turkish, Hayal opened two years ago when Aksoy’s home catering operation outgrew her usual clientele of family and friends. With her two younger sons acting as translators, Aksoy said it’s important to her to have a woman-owned and operated restaurant that also makes new Canadians feel as welcome as she did when her family came here seven years ago.
While many of the diners coming in are Kurdish and Turkish, she adds that they’ve been branching out to do more food events around the city to draw in different people. It’s working so far, as she said the restaurant has been seeing Somali, Pakistani and Indian diners drawn to the cuisine’s overlapping flavours.
What else is on the menu
The large menu has familiar comfort foods such as kebabs, pides and meze platters. But Aksoy recommends four quintessential dishes at the restaurant.
One is the aforementioned cigkofte. The next is sarma ($14.99), a tangy, lemony appetizer of grape leaves stuffed with rice mixed with tomato paste, onions, black pepper and fresh herbs, served with haydari, a garlicky yogurt sauce.
Mumbar ($29.99) is a long and narrow sausage of rice, onion, mint, black pepper and other aromatics stuffed into intestine and boiled for four hours. (Aksoy jokingly calls it Kurdish spaghetti.) It’s an acquired taste, but good for those who are fans of offal and can appreciate mint as an aromatic in savoury applications.
Keledos ($17.99) is a creamy and hearty dish of slow-cooked green lentils, chickpeas, cracked wheat, kashk (dried, salty and tangy yogurt) and an herb called keledos (white beet plant).
If coming in a group, the United Nations Tray (pictured is the large version, $74.99) is a smorgasbord of kebabs, koftas, salads and house-made lavash bread. There’s a smaller version for $38.99 that can easily serve two and is ideal for first-timers looking to get a taste of everything.
Explore the area
The restaurant is right between the neighbourhood’s two biggest attractions. To the north it’s Downsview Park for those looking for a non-fast food option prior to catching a show at Rogers Stadium (the restaurant is also open until 2 a.m. every day). To the south it’s Yorkdale Mall. But right next door to Hayal is Mustafa Restaurant (860 Wilson Ave.), a longstanding Turkish kebab and lahmacun specialist that’s in the Star’s Top 100 Under 100 guide. Head east on Wilson and you’ll enter Little Manila with choice restaurants like Tinuno for kamayan feasts (3520 Bathurst St., another Top 100 entry) and snack spot Hopia Factory (358 Wilson Ave.), which I’ve featured on the Food Crawl as well.
