The Lonesome Vegetarian: Tastes of Turkey and Ethiopia give meatless diners some global options

I’m slightly late writing about two new-ish cafes that are small and quite special.

Each brings a cuisine that’s hard to find in Fort Worth and is as interesting for vegetarians as for carnivores. Both deserve a following.

Flying Carpet Turkish Cafe, which recently reopened after a long hiatus with an all-new menu, is also a rug shop with 500 handmade Turkish rugs on display, stacked in the front room and hanging on the beautiful wood-plank-lined walls in the dining rooms.

The menu naturally highlights a lot of kebabs, lamb chops and cubed-meat entrees. But for vegetarians, the attraction is all in the appetizers, or meze’ler. Fortunately, they’re numerous, good-sized and varied enough to make many different meals over time.

You’ll find three choices of eggplant dishes, starting with imam bayildi (meaning “the imam fainted”— some of the names are quite fun), which is whole baby eggplant stuffed with tomato, onion and garlic, and cooked in olive oil. There’s also the stew-like soslu patlijan, sauteed eggplant in a tomato-onion sauce, and a good version of the familiar baba ghanoush (eggplant pureed with tahini, garlic, etc., similar to hummus).

The long list also includes red lentil soup with vegetables and herbs; zucchini pancakes made with carrot and parsley; a fried cigar-shaped pastry stuffed with salty white cheese and parsley; two yogurt dishes; and falafel, hummus, dolmas and tabbouleh.

All these are available as separate dishes for $5.95-$8.95, slightly less at lunch. At dinner, though, you can try a sampler of five ($14.95) served with baskets of fluffy pita. It includes hummus, baba ghanoush, dolma (grape leaves stuffed with onions, currants and pine nuts), the soslu patlijan eggplant dish and my favorite thing on the menu, ajili ezme, a sharply spicy red pepper-tomato dip with chopped walnuts. If you get a full order of this, pair it with one of the yogurt plates or the excellent baba ghanoush to cool down your tongue.

I had a less blissful experience with the one entrée that sounded vegetarian: ispanaka sote, or spinach sauté ($18.95). I liked the spinach, which was cooked with onions, tomatoes, peppers and mushrooms, but the orzo served alongside is made with chicken stock, a fact our server did not volunteer even though I had told her up front that we were eating vegetarian. She was at a loss to suggest a substitution for next time, and said no one really asks about vegetarian entrees here.

Really? Hmm. Think I’ll stick to spending my $19 on the friendlier appetizer section of the menu, which makes me quite happy.

The Flying Carpet Turkish Cafe, 1223 Washington Ave., Fort Worth. 817-877-1223; flyingcarpetturkishcafe.com

Samson’s Bistro Ethiopian Cuisine is a still smaller, funkier proposition, with just five tables and a few window-counter seats in a bare-bones space next door to a 7-Eleven. The food is the real thing, though, and the owners are warm and friendly guides to the cuisine and its traditions. And vegans are welcomed right on the signage outside.

The one appetizer, sambosa, is vegan, and it’s similar to an Indian samosa: a pair of fried pastry shells stuffed with gently spiced lentils. For the main event, there are six vegan “wats” (stews, basically) for $9.95 or $10.95. By far the best way to explore the cuisine, if you don’t know it, is to get a small or large vegetarian combo platter and try several of these at once.

The larger option ($23.95) is supposed to serve two, but we found it more than enough for a party of three. It had all six dishes, three based on beans and three on vegetables. Miser wat is lentils with garlic and onions in berbere sauce (red peppers and spices). Kik alicha is split peas in a gingery curry. The best was shiro wat, spicy chickpeas in berbere. The vegetable dishes are green beans with carrots and onions; steamed chopped collard greens with peppers and onions; and cabbage sautéed with potatoes, carrots and curry spices.

All this is served with rolls of injera, a spongy crepelike bread that’s central to Ethiopian cuisine. It has a great nutritional profile, with gluten-free teff flour that’s high in protein, vitamins and minerals including iron — a real boon for vegetarians. It’s also your utensil: You tear off a piece, use it to scoop up some wat, and eat the whole thing.

It’s all to be enjoyed communally, like the companionable coffee service we were invited to join, sitting in a circle with other diners in a clearing in the front room. And it’s not to be missed.

Samson’s Bistro Ethiopian Cuisine, 4307 Camp Bowie Blvd., 214-944-4446.

This story was originally published June 26, 2015 at 6:29 AM with the headline "The Lonesome Vegetarian: Tastes of Turkey and Ethiopia give meatless diners some global options."