One of the things I enjoy about going to large international cities is that they tend to have immigrant communities, which gives them plenty of good ethnic restaurants in addition to the native foods. For Frankfurt, one of the larger immigrant communities is Turkish, with several parts of town having notable concentrations of Turkish businesses. In particular, the directly east of the Hauptbahnhof has several large and well-regarded Turkish halal restaurants places. One of these, Central Grill, was my choice for lunch on my last day in Frankfurt.
Central Grill is one of those places that has the ambiance I get from most of the Turkish places I’ve been in recent history: a modestly-classy restaurant geared around both eat-in and take-away service, featuring a large service area with a spinning spit of meat, several attractive refrigerator cases of to-be-cooked kebab, and a nice, well-lit and clean dining area. The staff promptly seated me at a nice window seat and offered up a beverage while I perused the menu.
Central Grill has a pretty good selection of Turkish food, with a decent collection of soups, kebabs, and various Döner dishes carved right off the spit. After looking over the options, I opted for the Adana kebabı, a pleasantly spicy ground meat mixture served up on a skewer. Done well, this is one of my favorite styles of kebab (I like the similar Iranian koobideh kebab as well, when I can get them), and Central Grill does a good job with theirs. A nice, flavorful meat with bold chile pepper notes. A nice char on the kebabı. A flavorful rice/barley medley below for both taste and texture. A nice spicy sauce. A few grilled chile peppers to round it out. The result was a very bold and flavorful dish that was a nice difference from the German food of the last several days.
Best of all, Central Grill is rather cheap, at least at lunch. I had my complete fill of delicious spiced kebab, served up by a friendly and attentive staff, for under 10 euro. I only wish I could get something this good around home.
