Kilyos Fish & Grill

Canca was first exposed to the restaurant business when, as a young boy, his mother opened a small café in his hometown of Kilyos, a resort town near Istanbul, on the Black Sea. He and his siblings learned the business firsthand, helping run the restaurant. Perhaps his hometown’s location explains the trappings of Fish and Grill, with its nautical and Mediterranean-seaside feel.

While the atmosphere is that of a casual seaside, the food is true Turkish. The red lentil soup is a smooth blend of vegetables with a nice creamy flavor. The Turkish salad is finely chopped fresh lettuce, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers and parsley tossed in vinegar and olive oil, and topped with crumbled feta cheese.

The arugula salad has a contrasting flavor, as the arugula is tossed in olive oil and lemon for a more pungent flavor and topped with almonds to provide crunchiness.

After savoring these items, we enjoyed an assortment of five cold appetizers. Homemade hummus is whipped to a very smooth consistency with cumin and garlic seasoning for a pleasant flavor. The eggplant salad is pureed, char-broiled eggplant seasoned with garlic, lemon and oil. The eggplant with tomato sauce has cubed, fried eggplant in a fresh tomato and onion sauce; lemon and oil again highlight the flavors.

The spicy, minced peppers are a mixture of diced tomatoes, onions, peppers, parsley and walnuts with spices in the lemon and oil. Lebni is a thick, homemade yogurt loaded with chopped walnut, garlic, carrot, squash and dill. These dishes are meant for spreading on the homemade bread presented in the eatery.

We sampled two of the hot appetizers, the cheese pastries — cigar-shaped pastries filled with feta, parsley and dill — and the zucchini pancakes served with garlic yogurt sauce. This sauce was so tasty, we dipped the pastries in it. My main dish was the St. Peter’s fish. Although most fish offerings are served filleted or whole (and I love the presentation of a whole fish), I felt lazy this evening, so I had the filet lightly panfried in lemon juice

My spouse ordered the mix grill. It proved to be a large portion of skewered chicken and skewered lamb accompanied by a lamb patty and a lamb chop. Both dishes were served with a hefty portion of grilled, fresh mixed vegetables and homemade rice pilaf.

Even desserts are on the healthy side of the scale. Helva is a baklava-like dietetic dessert made with honey and semolina flour. Kazan Dibi is a whole-wheat, rice flour and milk delicacy similar in texture and flavor to vanilla pudding. Sultan’s Delight is a dark chocolate puddingcake mixture with a very rich flavor. From its taste, it’s perhaps the least healthy of the bunch, but at least it’s made with olive oil rather than butter. And, of course, there is baklava. For this guilt-free trip of healthy food, Fish and Grill rates AHHHHH (5) out of 5 AHs.

Too many restaurants, frankly, rest on the laurels of "family," as if a portrait on the mantel excused slapdash food on the plate. So I'd approached Fish & Grill with expectations lowered by un-stellar experiences.

Those anxieties, happily, were dispensed with the arrival of the appetizers - a subtly seasoned (with parsley and dill) fried eggplant and tomato salad, and airy, still-warm zucchini pancakes, given loft with egg whites, and texture with a shred of zucchini and yogurt-cheese in a whole wheat-and-semolina batter.

The fresh-faced, 52-seat BYO is shades of coffee and gold, the Turkish platters of Canca's homeland decorating the walls, the imperative copper coffee tureen on a counter, the imperative Pepsi cooler glowing in the corner, white tablecloths and comfortable wooden chairs.

It is reminiscent, in that sense, of a couple of my favorite "family operating businesses" - Aya's Cafe at 21st and Arch, with its cilantro-infused Egyptian falafel and fava-bean dips; and at 23d and Grays Ferry (a block south of South), Balkan Express, known for its Serbian stuffed cabbage, house-smoked cold cuts, and chicken paprikash.

Those are family restaurants (wives, uncles and grandmothers at the stove) that rely on family not as mere labor, but for family recipes and carefully rendered dishes, the ingredients attentively chosen, the seasoning applied with precision, the cooking well-practiced and sure.

In the case of Fish & Grill, Canca, who has a hint of Richard Gere about his aspect, adds food-pyramid consciousness to the menu: The grilled whole fish (we had a sweet, white-fleshed Mediterranean branzino, and royal dorado, moist and full-flavored, but bonier) are served with "fresh color way greens" - his way of saying a palette of baby arugula and shredded carrot. The tender grilled, marinated baby lamb chops, and perhaps the most luscious rendition of kofte - the herbed Turkish-style grilled beef and lamb patties - that I can remember encountering, are served with a vivid, vitamin-rich arugula-yogurt sauce.

It is unfussy fare, but indeed spare on fat and oils, showcasing the Mediterranean diet's focus on vegetables - cucumbers, peppers, onions and mint (in chopped salads that avoid the overly tart style of the genre) - fresh seafood, and grilled kebabs, chops and chicken.

Why now? Why here? Well, Canca's extended family ran a cafe in Turkey near the Bosporus Straits where, in his youth, he cleaned the fish. As things came to pass, a cousin opened his own place, Liman Restaurant ("The Best Grilled Fish and Kebabs on the Bay") in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where Canca oversaw the kitchen on weekends, ordering vegetables, checking food quality. Russian customers visiting from Northeast Philadelphia would lament the lack of a Liman in their neck of the woods.

The idea, at first, was a family partnership, bringing a taste of Brooklyn to Philadelphia's diverse Northeast. But the wife of a cousin didn't find the move quite to her taste, and Fish & Grill shortly became a solo family act.

So it goes in a "family operating business" - the priorities of family sometimes trumping the imperatives of business.