fitzroyalty

This is a review of the wonderful new Turkish restaurant Gigibaba on Smith St in Collingwood, with a few tangential diversions. Chef Ismail Tosun previously ran the Eminem restaurant in the inner Perth suburb of Leederville; if any comparison is possible between the cultural desert of Perth and the oasis of Melbourne, then Leederville is the closest thing to Fitzroy in Perth.

For anyone with hedonistic tendencies, Leederville was the place to live. It was my home for four years prior to moving to Melbourne, and it had been a place I had visited regularly since I was a teenager. Cafes and bookshops stayed open late at night (‘are they allowed to?’ nervous Perth suburbanites asked in trepidation) and the rate of bogan violence was lower than almost anywhere else in the city.

The police station was across the road from the brothel; everything was relaxed and omnisexual. Like Fitzroy, it was a formerly gritty light industrial inner city area starting to gentrify. A block away from my home on Oxford St was the Re store, Perth’s equivalent of Mediterranean Wholesalers.

Leederville was the place to go for alternative cinema. I remember sneaking away from school one afternoon to go to what was then the New Oxford twin cinema (before it became the Luna cinema, part of the Palace chain) to see an obscure English new release called Withnail and I. I would have been fifteen. It was so good I had to return a week later to see it again, alone in my precocious pretentiousness.

Many years later I went to an R rated film on Good Friday at the Luna (a David Lynch if I remember correctly) to make a political statement in sympathy with the rebellious owners. Under WA law at the time, R rated films were banned on Good Friday. Films containing sex were allegedly offensive to Jesus on the anniversary of his death. Somehow I think Jesus had more important things on his mind than Sailor and Lula philosophising about fucking, but I digress.

The point of this reflection is supposed to be about a little Turkish restaurant called Eminem that opened at 224 Carr Place, Leederville in 2000 or 2001. Like Leederville itself, Eminem was a small and stylish yet affordable haven of sophistication in a barren land. I went there in its first week, and returned several times. The food was always excellent and the welcome, especially at first as they built a client base, was charming.

I remember the most wonderful moist kofte in a spiced tomato sauce. I also remember gradually realising, amongst a group of friends having dinner there one night in 2002, that I was being stood up by a beautiful woman I was briefly and hopelessly in love with. That may have been my last visit to Eminem.

I heard that Eminem had moved from cosy cosmopolitan Leederville to larger premises in anglocentric Nedlands in 2006 before closing abruptly six months later. Now chef Ismail Tosun has opened Gigibaba Turkish Tapas at 102 Smith St (the border between Collingwood and Fitzroy) in the centre of another rapidly gentrifying area, particularly the Collingwood side they are on.

You can read more about Tosun here (note – this article is not entirely accurate – it states there was no kebab shop in Leederville when there is a Greek souvlaki place that has been there for many years. Evidently he also did not return permanently to Turkey to live).

My girlfriend and I arrived at 6.30pm on Friday night and managed to be seated at the large square communal table at the back of the dining room. There are a few small tables at the front and more seats along the long bar. It’s cosy and intimate inside. The multitude of large naked light bulbs that hang from the ceiling are wonderful in their stark simplicity, yet their light is subtle and the interior is as fashionably dark as other nearby places.

The wine list features many Spanish wines and some good local varieties. All are available by the glass or by 300ml or 500ml carafes – not by the bottle. I first noticed this innovation in wine serving at Griff’s wine pub, and it is also a feature of St Jude’s. We started with the two tempranillos on the list, a drier and more robust one from Rioja and a softer one from another region. I later had the most wonderful garnacha (grenache) with pronounced vanilla and chocolate flavours, and my girlfriend had an excellent Pedro Ximinez with dessert.

The food is remarkable. Each dish is modest in size but extraordinary in intensity and thus satisfying. We ordered six dishes and dessert. Below are the octopus salad, cauliflower, prawns, lamb cutlets, mushrooms, chicken and the mystery dessert plate (you’re not told what’s on it) – from the left there are prunes stuffed with walnuts and covered in cream, baklava and Turkish delight. There should be sufficient choices to please vegetarians.

Every dish was lovely, with the prawns being a particular highlight. Freshly baked bread is served with the Turkish tapas, and today’s was scented with cinnamon. One of the extremely helpful staff mentioned that the spice in the bread changes daily. The service was brilliant throughout. At about $120 for two, with dessert and four glasses of wine, we considered our amazing meal to represent great value.

I hate it when the dead tree media reviews somewhere on my turf before me, but the Age has already published a very positive review of Gigibaba. You may need to look twice for them on Smith St as they do not yet have their name on the wall or any signage outside. Judging by the fact that staff reported that they have been full from the moment they opened, signage is probably not necessary.

Gigibaba is also not yet complete. The Age mentions only the prunes as dessert, yet two days after that review was published we enjoyed three different treats on the mystery dessert plate. We were disappointed when we asked for Turkish coffee and were denied because a suitable hot plate for the open coffee pot is still to be found, so in the meantime Italian style coffee is served.

A new standard has been set in the area by the unique flavours and impeccable quality of Gigibaba. It is possibly even better than the original Eminem in Leederville. In terms of style and quality of food, the nearest competitors are Añada and The Commoner. Will The Commoner maintain its reputation as the most reviewed restaurant in the area? Nearly places like Cavallero, Ladro, Griff’s, St Jude’s and the Builder’s Arms may soon notice a difference in trade.

Gigibaba is already a success, and I hope Tosun doesn’t repeat his Perth experience by moving to Armadale and then closing!

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 12:10 am and is filed under Collingwood, Perth, Smith St, business, customer service, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.