I abandoned my husband for a baked potato last week on Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace. To be fair to me, I only planned to be gone for a couple of minutes, and he was comfortably seated at one of Cappadocia Bistro‘s outdoor tables with stuffed grape leaves ($12.99); a pile of juicy, Istanbul-style grilled chicken wings ($18.99); and a Zero Gravity Conehead IPA ($8).
Inside, I walked to the back of the strikingly tiled new restaurant owned by the Oktay family, who closed their 13-year-old Istanbul Kebab House on lower Church Street shortly before opening Cappadocia Bistro in late April. My destination: the toppings bar for the loaded baked potatoes called kumpir (from $8.99), a popular Turkish street food.
Cappadocia co-owner Hasan Oktay, 48, gave me the rundown, which included haydari, a garlicky, dill-flecked yogurt; housemade hummus and baba ghanoush; various pickles and olives; and a soupy, yogurt-dressed potato salad somewhat mysteriously named “American salad.”
The humble baked potato reached new heights.
When I mentioned that I planned to order kumpir, Oktay sent a server into the kitchen to see if any remained after a busy day. The young man returned with the sole remaining potato (phew), and I stayed to watch him slice it open; mash the steamy flesh with butter, salt, shredded cheddar and mozzarella; and then carefully layer my topping selections one by one, finishing with a vermilion tangle of pickled cabbage.
Well over 10 minutes had passed before I returned to my husband, kumpir in hand. I think he forgave me as we spooned up dense, dairy-drenched mouthfuls of potato, richly mixed with smoky baba ghanoush and earthy bulgur salad and spangled with briny pickled vegetables and olives. The humble baked potato reached new heights.
Most diners at Cappadocia Bistro will not need to abandon their tablemates to order a loaded baked potato because servers can provide a handy toppings checklist. But if you’re a kumpir neophyte, I do recommend laying eyes on the toppings bar to help inform your decision.
A visit to the back of the restaurant will also provide a bonus close-up view of the brick oven, which is used to bake lahmacun — blistered, paper-thin Turkish flatbreads — and more substantial filled flatbreads, such as open-faced pide and rolled, stuffed bafra pide. On one visit, a flotilla of round, dimpled, seed-speckled rolls had just come out of the oven.
Due to a snafu with electric and gas certifications, the original blue-and-white-tiled 4,000-pound oven installed in the Burlington restaurant this spring had to be ripped out and an entirely new one installed, at significant expense, before the full flatbread menu could be served in early July. The new oven is not as charming as the first, but it’s functional, and that’s what counts.
I’d been waiting for that oven with anticipation since enjoying a sneak preview of what it could produce during a visit to one of the Oktays’ other restaurants, Cappadocia Café, which opened last September in White River Junction. It serves a similar menu, though it’s also open for breakfast and does not offer kumpir.
Between them, Hasan, his brother Vural and Vural’s wife, Jackie, also own Tuckerbox restaurant in White River Junction, plus a retail store there and a second on Church Street. The shops, both called Little Istanbul, sell spices, housewares and other imported goods from the brothers’ native Turkey. If you fall in love with the enchanting, glass mosaic pendant lights that hang like the necklaces of giants in Cappadocia Bistro, for example, they can be yours across the street at Little Istanbul.
Jackie, 38, explained that Cappadocia is the name of a volcanic valley in central Turkey, known for its striking natural landscape and ancient structures dating back to the Bronze Age. The “magical” place is a favorite family travel destination, she said.
Although the Oktays had originally planned to keep Istanbul Kebab House open in Burlington with their new Cappadocia Bistro, visas for the five Turkish chefs they needed to staff both businesses were refused late last year, Jackie said. Hasan, who managed the Burlington operations, was interested in a change, his sister-in-law said, and decided to pour his energy into the new spot, where he is a busy, beaming presence. Istanbul Kebab House remains for sale.
The 50-seat Cappadocia Bistro has an additional 25 outdoor seats and is open for lunch and dinner six days a week and closed, unusually, on Thursdays. The restaurant launched with counter service but has since switched to table service due to customer feedback, Jackie said.
The Oktays have also added a roster of the meze, small plates such as the grape leaves and dips, that were beloved by fans of Istanbul Kebab House. And they carried over the finger-licking doner kebabs of rotisserie-roasted lamb and beef ($14.99/$19.99) or chicken ($13.99/$18.99), which can be ordered sandwiched with abundant condiments in a lavash wrap or a bouncy, fresh-baked roll.
The flatbread menu is new and deliciously different. On a recent visit, four of us were satiated by three flatbreads after an array of several meze, including the meaty, just-spicy-enough chicken wings, which came with a fresh chopped tomato, pepper and cucumber salad and dipping sauces. Jackie had advised me to start a Turkish meal correctly with a glass of anise-forward raki ($10-$14), an alcohol distilled from grapes. It came in a beautiful copper holder filled with ice, but I could not overcome my black licorice aversion. Even my husband, who likes licorice, said, “It’s a lot.”
The flatbreads, on the other hand, were unanimous faves. Lahmacun are relatively small and cracker-thin — though more flexible — and cook in a flash in the 600- to 700-degree oven, spread with either a mix of minced beef and vegetables ($8.99) or just vegetables ($8.50). They’re served with sliced tomato, onion and parsley, which you place on the lahmacun, squeeze with lemon and then roll to eat, Jackie explained.
Pide are long, open-faced, kayak-shaped flatbreads with a toothsome pizzalike crust, filled with a choice of vegetables, cheese and meats. We chose a deluxe ($22.99) with three sections: spiced ground lamb, beefy sausage with cheese, and finely chopped lamb mixed with sweet peppers and tomatoes. With all of that going on, we opted against adding an egg, ($2.50), which Jackie had recommended.
For our bafra pide, we selected the mushroom, cheese, and tender shredded lamb and beef doner kebab ($18.99) all wrapped in a long tube of the finely rolled dough. Brushed with butter, dusted with spice and sprinkled with nigella seeds, each bite was luxuriously rich and meaty but not overwhelmingly so.
I had spied a platter of fine pastry making the rounds to neighboring tables. On my first visit, our server said the elaborate French-style pâtisserie are made by the group’s pastry chef in White River Junction and ferried regularly to Burlington. We picked the most subdued among the cream, chocolate and icing-drenched choices: a generously sized, crisp puff-pastry Napoleon ($14.99) layered with not-too-sweet stabilized cream and berries.
Jackie later told me that such desserts are very popular in Turkey, but I knew from my White River Junction Cappadocia visit that the chefs also make other traditional Turkish sweets. On our second visit with friends, I bossily waved away the dessert platter and asked if there was any baklava or similar. We were rewarded by excellent — and much less showy — pistachio-laden crunchy baklava ($3.50) and sobiyet ($4), a type of baklava filled with cultured cream called kaymak.
I found myself finishing the last crisp shards with a final sip of the raki, its anise flavor mellowed at that point by melted ice. It’s a magical place indeed that can overcome my distaste for licorice.
If you go
Cappadocia Bistro, 92 Church St., Burlington, 488-3310, cappadociabistro.com. Note: The restaurant is closed on Thursdays.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Here for Kumpir | Cappadocia Bistro fires up a Turkish menu on Church Street Marketplace”
This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 2 2025.
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