Sofra opened its doors last Monday, Jan. 19. It is located on 340 S. Walnut St. Suite 4, and it is open from 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.
Mehmet and Naciye Akgun own the restaurant. Mehmet, the general manager, said the idea of opening a restaurant was inspired by his wife’s cooking.
“We were thinking about having something like this for a long time, me and my wife,” he said. “Actually, it was her cooking skills that we owe the idea to. She is a very good cook, and friends and family who would taste her food have been telling us we should open something and everyone should taste this delicious food.”
He said although they have wanted to open a restaurant for a while, they were not able to carry out their plans until now.
They knew the landlord who owned the building, and once she informed them of an empty space, they took the opportunity and began working on their café, he said.
“The construction process took a very long time and we went through a lot of steps ... since there was no kitchen here and it was just a big empty place, we had to build everything from scratch, including the kitchen, and that took us a while,” he said. “We waited and worked on it. It was a long, hard process, but in the end, we did it.”
Restaurant owner Naciye said her recipes are inspired by an antique cookbook she received in ?college.
“When I was studying at college, my major was Turkish language and literature, and I had a very old book that one of my professors gave me,” she said. “He found it in an antique store and said, ‘You might like to read this,’ because I like to read Ottoman and translate all those things ... the book actually is from the Ottomans and is a hundred-something years old.”
The book contains the basics of Turkish cuisine, she said, and she plans on putting it on display in Sofra in the future.
Mehmet described Turkish food as diverse because of the combination of cultures that can be found in Turkey.
The country sits between Europe and the Middle East, and as a result, the food includes spicy Middle Eastern dishes and the fresh fruits and vegetables of the Mediterranean.
Although Sofra is a café, the owners emphasized that they serve a variety of dishes.
“We offer breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Mehmet said. “Although we are a café, it’s not just coffee, tea and a couple of bakery items. We have a food menu for lunch and dinner — Turkish home-cooking dishes like chicken, beef, vegetarian options and ?desserts.”
The food is all prepared from scratch, Naciye said, including the bread dough and yogurt. The restaurant does not use any frozen materials. She said their ingredients are fresh and their food is healthy because of its Mediterranean background.
She said their food is completely authentic.
“The way we cook has not changed ... people sometimes change things and make it Americanized, and I say, ‘No.’”
Mehmet said Sofra has received positive reviews from customers. Bloomington is home to many international restaurants, but he emphasized that their café offers something unique.
“Everything here is Turkish home-cooking, and we’ve had quite a few students here from Turkey, and they have been waiting for something like this for a very long time, because although we have Turkish food available in Bloomington, the food we cook here is not available in any of those,” he said. “They are similar, but we try to make sure that it is as authentic as it gets.”
