Motif Restaurant – Turkish Flavours Along Çalış Beach

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Amble along Çalış Beach promenade and you can take your pick from a whole variety of restaurants. Motif Restaurant is one of those restaurants.

And if you’re looking for some genuine Turkish cuisine, you aren’t going to go far wrong at Motif.

Opened in the spring of 2019 with the aim of offering diners a range of dishes, some familiar and some not so familiar, Motif changed hands a couple of years later.

But the mission and – bar one or two dishes – the menu, remained the same.

And, thankfully, Motif Restaurant is still a great place to eat.

Motif Restaurant, Çalış Beach – Let’s Eat

Despite being regulars in previous years, we hadn’t been to Motif Restaurant for a while.

Our recent return was because friends were looking for some good Turkish cuisine along the beach and Motif jumped into our heads.

And we ended up eating with them.

On The Menu

The restaurant serves lots of Turkish favourites that you might see in other Turkish restaurants:

• Chicken şiş kebab and mixed grill platter with kuzu pirzola (lamb chops), and chicken wings and the like.
• Popular meze plates like Antep Ezme and yoghurt based dips.

And then there are a few dishes from the Ottoman kitchen and a big selection of dishes that are part of the famous cuisine of the Hatay Province in the southeast.

So revered is Hatay cuisine that in 2017, it was awarded City of Gastronomy status by UNESCO as part of their Creative Cities network.

Motif Restaurant Meze Plates

We’re not going to go through the full Motif Restaurant hot and cold meze selection here.

We’ll just give you a taster of what we’ve had in the past.

Shared Mixed Meze Platter

Most recently, with our friends, they wanted to try a selection of dishes.

If you’re also that way inclined, you can go for the mixed meze platter.

This would make a great lunch shared between a couple of people, especially with bread to dip into them.

Since Motif was taken over by the same owners as neighbouring George’s, there’s now also the famous Turkish balloon bread served with your meal.

We love balloon bread but also some extra bread, too, for mopping up. And the waiter duly obliged.

We were all diving in and we honestly didn’t take much notice of what is served on the meze platter.

But we can say there are definitely a couple of yoghurt meze – one mixed with red cabbage – hummus, spicy ezme, aubergine salad and stuffed vine leaves.

Knowing Your Onions

If you’re going to Motif Restaurant and you know the types of meze you like then you can also order fewer, bigger plates.

On one occasion, we ordered homemade falafel, a plate of aubergine salad and – one of my favourites – Gavurdağı salad.

And one of our big favourites – Motif restaurant has introduced us to different dishes over the years. The Ottoman dish, mutancana above is one example.

Another example is hot hummus served with pastırma.

Hot hummus is quite common, these days, around the some of the Fethiye restaurants, but when we had it, it was something we hadn’t tried before.

Anyway, dipping wedges of bread into this is a real treat.

We love it so much, we’ve since added this dish to our hummus recipe on the blog, if you want to make your own at home.

And For The Main Course

For our most recent visit, again, our friends weren’t sure what the wanted.

So we ordered two main meals to arrive at the same time as the meze so we could all delve in.

The shared meze plate, the hot hummus, içli köfte and then a mixed grill and ali nazik kebab.

But if it’s just me and Barry, it’s a case of being a creature of habit.

Kuzu şiş – lamb şiş kebab served with flatbreads, sumac onions, grilled vegetables and rice.

In this photo, the kebab is served with a tomato bulgur pilaf but we did notice on our last visit that rice is now favoured.

If you love lamb, there are other lamb choices on the menu such as lamb tandır and kuzu pirzola (lamb chops).

Over the years, we’ve had other new to-us-dishes such as the meatballs served in cherry sauce – a flavour from Hatay and neighbouring Syria.

There are güveç dishes – including some seafood options if meat is not your thing.

And if you’re looking for vegetarian and vegan dishes, these are labelled on the menu.

What About Fussy Eaters?

Not everyone likes to dive straight in there with Turkish cuisine when they’re on holiday.

If you’re fancying all this food but are thinking friends and family are not going to be impressed, whilst we’d all love them to dip their toes in and try some of the dishes, there’s also a daytime snack menu featuring dishes like burgers, wraps and pizza.

Motif Restaurant – Useful Information

• Motif Restaurant is along Çalış Beach promenade between George’s Grill & Steakhouse and The Palms Restaurant (see map below).
• The restaurant specialises in Anatolian cuisine but there is also a more international daytime menu, too, as well as a kids’ menu.
• There is a full bar that also serves cocktails and infused gins.
• And if you have a sweet tooth, there is also a range of traditional Turkish desserts to try.
• We love eating at Motif, but if you don’t want to take just our word for it, also check out some of the great reviews online.
• And if this place doesn’t look like your thing, check out some of the other places where we like to eat and drink in the Fethiye area.

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