Marmaris

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Marmaris

Right now, Bath is all about reinvention. The tourist droves are receding, leaving residents to rediscover their hometown without having to constantly sidestep their way out of photo opportunities or pick their way through a traffic jam of tour buses. Refuting a myth about operating a business in a city that relies so heavily on the tourist purse, several restaurant owners are breathing a sigh of relief as well: apparently, the establishments off the main cream tea/Jane Austen-themed drag prefer it when the holiday season is over, too. Many tourists, you see, have their picture taken outside one of the city’s many pretty, independent bistros before carrying on down the road to whichever franchise operation has supplied today’s two-for-one offer on the tastelesstourism.com website. When the hoards go home again, the Photo Op Bistro enjoys a massive surge in bookings made by regular customers who can once more walk freely through the city’s streets without being asked the way to the Pump Rooms in 53 variations on broken English.

Certain Bath restaurants, however, remain totally unaffected by the seasonal fluctuation, the long-standing Turkish taverna Marmaris being a case in point. Marmaris is one of only a few places in Bath that regularly attracts queues made up of visitors and locals alike (another being Jamie’s Italian, the TV dinner diner that local naysayers said would close down places like Marmaris for good – ha!). Prices at Marmaris are low(ish), and the grub – Mediterranean themed ‘classics’ on a mezze/moussaka theme – as familiar as fish and chips, but still ‘exotic’ enough to make Americans think they’re being adventurous (“Hey, Hank, look how the Brits spell kabobs! We gotta go in...”). Even when it’s packed (and it can get very, very packed: at Marmaris, 30 diners making free with the mezze is considered to be a quiet shift), the waistcoated waiters treat you like a superstar, dispensing extra chilli sauce, filling wine glasses and plonking unbidden complimentary gifts of fruit salad, sticky liqueur and Turkish delight on your table at meal’s end. Rather disappointingly, our starters didn’t live up to the lovely finish: hummus and taramasalata were both distinctly lacklustre, and served with too much limp pitta bread and a drab selection of ice-cold crudités. But our absolutely massive main courses of incik (slow roasted lamb shank, Turkish style) and a mixed kebab were as good as the genre gets, with the kebab far removed from the dreadful image its ilk has earned over too many years of being eaten on the wrong side of midnight after too much beer. There were fresh, flaky Turkish pastries on the sweet trolley – yes, Marmaris has a sweet trolley! – but no room left beyond the waistband in which to tuck them, and the bill came to less than £40 for two, with wine. Ironically, given the thrust of this review at the start, the whole experience brought back memories of the Turkish resort holiday I’ve never had, on my own doorstep – but without the tourists. (Melissa Blease)

MARMARIS 4-5 NEWMARKET ROW, GRAND PARADE, BATH, BA2 4AN TEL: 01225 461946.

VENUE VERDICT