Eddie Alasad aims to attract U-M students with quick-serve options and two floors of casual seating providing plenty of outlets to power laptops. | J. Adrian Wylie
Inspired by a trip to Turkey in 2023, Eddie Alasad of Sterling Heights branched out from several Leo’s Coney Islands he owns to launch Turkish Village Cuisine in Dearborn last year. Now he’s customizing the concept for a college town with an all-day, every-day combination of full-service and fast-casual fare.
Turkish Village Café succeeds Avalon Café and Kitchen, which moved to S. Main alongside the Mission Restaurant Group’s Pretzel Bell. Mission’s Jon Carlson is one of four partners in both Turkish Village locations.
“We wanted to touch base on everything and make it an infused Turkish Mediterranean restaurant that hits everybody’s taste buds,” says Alasad.
From the full-service corner dining room looking out on E. Liberty and Fourth Ave., Alasad cheerfully accommodated an unscheduled drop-in interview, painstakingly detailing the wide-ranging menus. The general themes are affordability and accessibility.
The more traditional Dearborn restaurant, for which he recruited over a dozen Turkish chefs, replaced a Jolly Pumpkin (another Mission brand). The new venture aims to attract U-M students with quick-serve options and two floors of casual seating providing plenty of outlets to power laptops. He figures the newly deployed basement space will be quieter for studying.
He’s eager to put the new La Marzocco espresso machine to work in the extensive beverage bar, where a broad assortment of nonalcoholic drinks are available beyond the typical espressos: lattes, frappes, Dubai hot chocolate, cold brews, Yemeni and Turkish coffees and teas, smoothies, refreshers, energizers, fresh juices, and boba (bubble tea).
The breakfast menu, available until 2 p.m., includes several egg dishes, toasts, handheld sandwiches, and such griddle offerings as stuffed brioche French toast and croffles—a linguistic and culinary portmanteau of croissant and waffle.
Rotisserie-roasted chicken and beef are known as doner in Turkey, but for familiarity’s sake, they’re listed here as shawarma and gyro; they’re featured in several starters, bowls, handhelds, wraps, and dinner entrées. Skewered beef, chicken, or lamb is served in wraps or as entrées with rice and salad. Shish (which translates as skewer) refers here to marinated chunks of meat, while kebab (the meat itself) denotes the ground form.
Vegetarian items are marked on the menu, including falafel, fattoush, and other salads, and six cold-dip starters. A platter of five of them, served with brick oven bread, is $22.99.
Once additional ventilation is installed, they’ll also have a variety of pides, football-shaped flatbreads topped with various meats, vegetables, and cheese, including a five-in-one sampler.
Desserts—some made in-house and some shipped by two-day air from Turkey—include five types of baklava and its warm, cheese-filled cousin künefe, Turkish delight, honeycomb bread, and trileçe milk cake.
Alasad’s travels led him to appreciate how Turks “specialize in food. They love food,” he says. “And I think because they were all over the world for a long period of time, they basically took the best out of Bosnia, out of Macedonia … the Middle East, out of Iran, out of Afghanistan, Pakistan. They took a lot of those cultures’ foods, and they mixed it into theirs and they made it their own.”
His daughter attended U-M and now studies at Case Western, so Turkish Village is the belated answer to her repeated suggestions to invest in Ann Arbor. “I’m not doing this business for a day or two. I want to do this business where we last a long time,” he says. “From the menu to the touches that we put into the building, I want the customers to be happy when they come, and I want [them] to be like, ‘Wow, this is nice, you know, I can afford this meal!’”
Turkish Village Café, 120 E. Liberty. (734) 492–3879. Daily 8 a.m.–10 p.m. turkishvillagecuisine.com
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