Turkish Village Cuisine, 120 E Liberty St, brings high-end Turkish food to the heart of Downtown Ann Arbor.
With its main location in Dearborn, the restaurant expands its reach into the Washtenaw County culinary scene — serving a similar but slightly different menu than its original home at 21931 Michigan Ave, Dearborn.
While the prices are comparable to some of the higher-end restaurants on main street, their generous portion sizes make up for it. Plan on having leftovers for lunch the next day or two after you eat here!
The shawarma fries for example is technically a side dish. But it comes in such a big bowl that you could mistake it for game day nachos. Perfect crisp and fluffy French fries are buried underneath tomatoes, red onion, garlic sauce and bell peppers.
A more typically sized side dish is the ezme. This tomato dish is very busy in a good way – a spicy, sweet and sour dish scoopable with either pitta bread or chips.
The Iskender dinner is enough to feed at least two people. This plate of beef and yogurt is served on a loose bed of cubed pita bread; with a loose salad on one side and rice on the others. The red sauce over the middle has a thick—but not too thick—consistency, and a taste halfway between spaghetti sauce and curry.
It almost seems silly to describe the Rocca salad as light. It is a cacophony of arugula, feta, pistachios, tomatoes, red onions, lemon juice and a crown of sliced strawberries around the mouth of the bowl. But the bowl is so big it is almost like ordering three salads. And the pomegranate molasses dressing generously coats the mouth like… well…. molasses—without being too sweet.
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This new addition to downtown is located in the old Avalon. The building with its exposed brick walls and old fashioned big windows is still there, the rustic charm of its previous owners has given way to a more polished, sophisticated atmosphere.
Pides—the Turkish spin on pizza—are also available. Six kinds are available, including veggie and cheese, spinach and cheese, sucuk (a Turkish variety of sausage), cheese, kusbali or lahmacun. But don’t worry if you can’t make up your mind on which kind you want—a five in one option lets you to have a little bit of each but the lahmacun.
Drinks start at $2.99. You can get whole grilled jalapenos for as little as $2.99, or rice for $3.99. The main meals can go as high as $28.99. The biggest thing on the menu is the Village Keab Tour—a $49.99 affair that features “one beef kabab, one beef shish, one chicken kebab, one chicken shish, rice and house salad.”
Turkish Village deserves to be the next must-go-restaurant on your list. The fact that they made it open right before the 2025 Ann Arbor Art Fair is no small feat. Expect to leave with leftovers and a full belly.
Turkish Village Cuisine.120 E Liberty St. 734-492-3879. turkishvillagecuisine.com.
Drew Saunders is a freelance business and environmental journalist who grew up just outside of Ann Arbor. He covers local business developments, embraces his foodie side with reviews restaurants, obsesses over Michigan's environmental state, loves movies, and feels spoiled by the music he gets to review for Ann Arbor!
