Kenal Ceylán has specific ideas about how to cook food and how to eat it – if you don’t like that, you can leave. Trust his intuition and you’ll eat some of the best lamb of your life in his restaurant, Doors, off Shenzhen University’s west gate.
Opened for three years and beloved by Shenzhen University students and Taoyuan residents, originally Doors was Savarona, a place students walked to after class. Business associates gathered here to smoke hookah, pilots took their wives to steak dinners and everyone who dined was expected to speak a little Chinese, although the waitresses helped you if you got stuck.
Doors signifies a different kind of restaurant, just as a door itself signifies change. The name is also simpler than the former moniker and mirrors an approach to how food gets made here. Doors offers the basics, because when the basics are done right, nothing else is needed.
To understand this concept, just order the lamb. Both the sirloin (RMB95/250-260 grams) and the kafes (RMB220/500 grams) recipes took Ceylán over a year to perfect. On the sirloin alone, he spent RMB6,000 buying meat to experiment with different variations. Thankfully, he settled on only the essentials, seasoning it with imported Canadian sea salt and olive oil, making it tangy as well as tender.
The kafes marinates for a month before being cooked, and once presented on a wood cutting board, should be eaten from the fleshiest part first, working toward the bone. It’s already expertly dressed, so don’t ask for sauce. Doors doesn’t have any, and you won’t be welcome back. A perfectly firm consistency, with crispy skin, the kafes will require a few satisfying chews before swallowing.
A simple rule here is: meat should relax but fish should be fresh. Marinated in garlic, olive oil and a little ginger before being served, the fish (RMB98) is garnished with lemon slices and peppers. Highly aware of its diverse customer base, here at least the eatery offers sauces: spicy for Westerners and lemon based for Asians.
For drinks, try the aptly named Cookie (RMB50), an ice-cold sugar cookie infusion of alcohol created by Ceylán. For nondrinkers, Doors has Turkish tea (RMB50).
In Ceylán’s home country, Turkey, sunflowers mean freedom. He designed the interior to look like a wooden vase with lighted sunflowers coming out of the floor. Though not as obvious, the food here has a sense of freedom about it as well, of experimentation gone right.
Price: Approx RMB60-100 per person
Who's Going: Anyone, especially those living in the Shenzhen University area
Good for: Causal lunch or date night
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