I’ve been eating at a lot of middle eastern restaurants recently including Sahara and Shiraz so that I can try all the shisha places before the ban kicks in at the end of this month in Singapore. Derwish Turkish Restaurant is another one of the few restaurants left that still have shisha available so I went there last Friday night for some dinner and shisha afterwards.
Derwish serve a variety of traditional Turkish appetisers and salads, kebabs, stews, desserts, drinks and pide (Turkish pizza) and strangely they also serve Italian style pizzas and pastas. My friend and I decided to get some hummus ($9), falafel ($9) and beyti ($23) to share. Derwish is a halal restaurant and doesn’t serve alcohol so I got a fresh carrot juice but unexpectedly they added a ton of sugar to it so it was sickly sweet and definitely not something I’ll be having again there.
The food came out very quickly with the hummus to start. The hummus (chick pea dip) was very good, it was creamy and delicious blended with just the right amount of garlic, tahini, lemon juice and olive oil. It came with pieces of Turkish flatbread to dip into it.
The falafel (deep fried chick pea patties) were also really good, we got 6 large falafels which were all crunchy and not oily, perfectly seasoned with heaps of flavour. It came with a yoghurt sauce that went really well with it.
I had read good reviews about the beyti (charcoal grilled minced lamb and beef wrapped in lavash bread) here and this was actually the first time I’d had beyti. The meat was tender and flavoursome and the lavash which is apparently freshly baked was soft and not too thick. It was topped with some gravy and had a yoghurt dipping sauce. Delicious!
After we’d polished off all the food which was surprisingly very filling, we moved to a table outside for shisha. They have a huge choice of different shisha flavours including some more unusual ones such as guava and bubblegum so we decided to try the guava flavour. Shisha is $50 for two people and you have a time limit of only 1 hour which is not very long compared to the other shisha places in Singapore. It seems to be the only place left in Bugis that still has shisha so it’s always packed full in the evenings. They don’t allow table reservations for shisha but as we had a reservation for dinner, they did their very best to keep a table available for us for shisha afterwards so we didn’t have to wait. They were also nice enough to allow us to stay a bit longer, for around 1 and a half hours. We got a pot of Turkish apple tea to share whilst having the shisha but the tea was again very sweet, it seems like they really like their sugar in Derwish!
Overall I definitely rate the food in Derwish highly and although I’d read good reviews about the restaurant, it completely surpassed my expectations and everything we had was great! The drinks unfortunately were a bit on the sweet side so next time I think I’ll be sticking to water. The restaurant has seating both inside and outside and is nicely decorated with a very Turkish feel to it, they even have a shop next door which sells Turkish handicrafts. The service at Derwish is friendly and helpful especially the waiters that served us whilst we were dining and the manager was also very polite and courteous, it really made our experience at Derwish a pleasant one 🙂
Derwish Turkish Restaurant
Address: 60 Bussorah Street, Singapore 199476 (Nearest MRT: Bugis)
Tel: 6298 8986
Opening hours: Monday – Thursday: 11am – 11pm, Friday – Sunday: 11am – 1am
Hope you’ve enjoyed my Derwish Turkish restaurant review, please feel free to leave a comment below with your own review of the restaurant or if you have any questions!
