Totally Turkish: Exploring 5 Ethnic Eateries in Haikou

By Marian Rosenberg, August 27, 2021

As a beach resort popular with the rest of China and annual winter visitors from Moscow, Sanya has been the most international city on Hainan Island for a long time now. However—in terms of a non-transient long-term foreign population—the provincial capital Haikou has it beat all to pieces. This is particularly reflected in the recent, surprising explosion of Turkish restaurants and cafes.

Starting in December 2019 with the Turkish owned and operated Turca and including the two that fell to the restaurateur's make-or-break first year curse, there have been a total of seven Turkish cafes and restaurants popping up in the city. The five currently operational ones all look poised to keep going strong. When one is talking about niche foreign cuisines which are unfamiliar to the average Chinese consumer, I don’t hesitate to say that even major international cities like Guangzhou or Beijing might have trouble boasting numbers like that.

Turca 土咖

Image via Ctrip

Currently showing up on Dianping as the best cafe in Haidian district and one of the top ten cafes in the city, Turca runs on the concept of doing one thing and doing it very, very well. While ‘finding the thing you love’ and making money from it is not something that works for every business owner, it’s definitely working for Turca’s owner Hakan. As a successful businessman in another completely unrelated field, he has a huge advantage over most foreign restaurants in that he simply doesn’t need to care if consumers think the Turkish coffee too strong or baklava too sweet.

From the original drinks menu to the pide and advanced-reservation, full-dinner menu, absolutely no concessions have been made to ‘Chinese-ify’ the flavor.

Decoration is on point. Background music is Turkish. Staff is attentive.

If you aren’t planning on going to sleep any time soon, we highly recommend the Turkish Coffee. It’s served traditionally – ‘as dark as night’ and ‘as thick as mud’. It comes with an accompanying plate of Turkish Delight or candied almonds as a sweetener to hold in your mouth as you drink the coffee.

Tuesdays to Sundays, 2-10pm. Building B7, Jinda Community, No. 24 Haida Road, Meilan District. See listing.

Romantic Turkey 浪漫的土耳其

Image via Meituan

Supposedly an upgrade over the Captain Turk kebab and wrap shop that used to be in Haikou’s Guomao, Romantic Turkey is very popular with the Chinese Instagram set and others whose main purpose in eating out is taking pictures to post on their socials. The main feature of this restaurant is a bellydance show held every evening during dinner. Be aware that unless you get a reservation, tables that overlook the show area are nearly impossible to secure. However, we’ve seen much better bellydances everywhere we’ve ever seen it so, if you can’t get one of these, don’t stress.

As with Turca, the restaurant is tucked away in one of the city’s backstreet villa areas. If you come by taxi, the compound security guards will not let you drive in; some people have also reported that Didi have also been stopped. It’s not that far of a walk from the entrance, and the Maps location pin is sufficiently accurate to find it without too much trouble.

Assuming they currently have the menu item you’re ordering, the quality of the food is comparable with the price, which is about twice what you would expect to pay for dinner at most restaurants in Haikou. Unfortunately the portions are small, and many foreigners have noted that the service is—at best—slow and spotty.

Worth going to at least once, I'm not sure I can recommend going back a second time.

Daily, 8am-2am. Building 6, Bi Lin Ge, 102 Jin Mao Xi Lu, Longhua District. See listing.

Nazar 土耳其餐吧