You can get it to-go at this Turkish food truck — but you’d miss half the fun

For an excellent dining experience, grab a counter stool at Lane County’s only Turkish food trailer.

Since opening Phat Turk in Cottage Grove a year ago, Seymen Cagirgan has cooked every dish from scratch. He offers takeout but prefers his guests stay while he feeds them directly from the grill: fire-roasted vegetables, grilled meats, flatbreads — the same dishes you’d eat on Turkish streets.

Phat Turk was modeled after a Turkish cooking method called ocakbaşı, meaning “at the hearth.” Guests can dine and chat at the seven-seat bar while Cagirgan prepares their food less than two feet away.

“It creates a special dinner or lunch,” he said. “This is not fast food. It takes time to eat.” 

As a Turkish immigrant, Cagirgan wanted to bring the dining culture of his home country to Oregon — that is, serving people good food as if it is your life’s purpose, not a quick transaction.

Cagirgan, 40, told me he has no other employees and no dreams of opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant or even a second trailer. Aside from the baklava (he buys sheets of the dessert from one of the most renowned baklava shops in Turkey), he makes every dish himself and intends to keep Phat Turk that way.

The mission for guests is simple: Sit, eat, talk to the chef and your companions, linger, eat more.

“People work hard,” Cagirgan said. “People deserve good food.”

Dipping in

I found Phat Turk while perusing food stops on Google for some upcoming weekend trips to southern Oregon.

Intrigued by such an intimate dining concept, I drove to Cottage Grove Public Market on a recent afternoon and walked out to the market’s food courtyard, where Cagirgan welcomed me to the bar top.

The candle he’d lit created more ambiance than scent, as the grilled meats overpowered any trace of mahogany. 

Everything was prepared in front of me: the bread, the grilled beef, the spicy and pickled beet juice rimmed with smoked and hot red pepper flakes — Turkey’s version of tajin. I could see the imprint of Cagirgan’s fingers on fresh lentil and bulgur patties, called mercimek köfte. Each soft and tomato-y patty was pressed in crisp lettuce and perked up with tart pomegranate molasses. It was the first dish he handed me and one of my favorites among the spread.

After charring eggplant on the grill for smoky babagannus (baba ganoush), Cagirgan mashed it with yogurt, garlic and tahini, then drizzled on chili oil and more tahini. Crunchy walnuts, mint and zippy sumac finished the silky dip. It was served with warm, house-made lavas (lavash) bread.

Vegans should order the mantar: deeply browned lion’s mane mushrooms served over a bright salad that Cagirgan says has turned the biggest tomato haters into fans.

Most dishes at Phat Turk are vegetarian, or what Cagirgan calls “fresh cooking.”

‘A better road’

But, it wouldn’t be ocakbaşı without grilled meats, and Phat Turk’s kebaps (kebabs) deliver. The protein — lamb, beef, chicken or mushroom — is tucked into hot flatbread with red pepper paste and tomato, onion and sumac salad. It’s simply seasoned, smoky and bright, especially when dipped in garlicky yogurt.

The meats in Phat Turk’s kebabs are locally sourced through Childers Meat Company in Eugene. Cagirgan buys his fresh herbs from Kellen’s Flower House in Cottage Grove. For specials, he’ll often collaborate with Blackberry Food Co-op, which is housed right inside Cottage Grove Public Market. 

As he prepared the wrap, Cagirgan told me about growing up in southwest Turkey. When he turned 10, the kitchen of his grandmother’s home in Acipayam became both a culinary training ground and a refuge from Turkish patriarchal norms.

“That’s why I grew up in my grandmother’s kitchen,” he said. “I tried to stay there from ‘Mansburg’. My father was a drinker and my grandfather was drinking, too. My father never called his father as a dad or daddy.”

The kitchen, he said, was a “better road.”

His father owned a pharmacy about 35 minutes from his grandmother’s home. It was a few doors down from an old-school restaurant, where Cagirgan would watch bakers stretching and folding dough for pide, lavas and other Turkish breads. He’d go to his grandmother’s kitchen, grab a towel and mimic their movements.

Now, he makes about 200 flatbreads a week for Phat Turk guests.

Baklava and kismet

Cagirgan continued as I ate the wrap and sipped on ayran, a cool and salty yogurt drink that counteracts the fatty meat.

“The biggest thing my father left me was language,” Cagirgan said. “He sent me to English courses in middle school every weekend. One language is one person. Two languages is two people.” 

The courses eventually helped him move to the United States in 2015 after graduating from the Culinary Arts Academy in Istanbul. Cagirgan worked in fine-dining establishments and large-scale kitchens across California and Washington, learning the clinical necessities of running a restaurant: Consistency, efficiency, discipline.

After five years as a chef at Google’s Seattle campus, he invested in his own business and opened Phat Turk last April. He’d heard about Cottage Grove Public Market through Eugene Foodies; a market manager contacted him after he shared his idea for Phat Turk with the Facebook group. Instead of grinding in corporate kitchens, Cagirgan now watches birds fly around the sun-streamed windows of his mobile restaurant. 

“There is no company or financial advisor behind me,” he said. “It’s free cooking.”

Phat Turk is a gastronomic take on the ’90s acronym for “Pretty Hot And Tasty.” His wife (and fellow ’90s kid), Nikki Sarno Cagirgan, helped him coin the name. The couple met in San Francisco and have been married for more than a decade.

Like the United States, Turkey is a fusion of many cultures and thus flavors (it’s also why there are so many spellings for “kebab”). It borders Iraq, Iran, Syria, Greece, Georgia and Armenia. 

“Everybody is connected to each other,” Cagirgan said. “What is dividing us is only geography. What is dividing the food? Only geography.”

For dessert, Cagirgan warmed up the most buttery piece of baklava I’ve had in my life. Karaköy Güllüoğlu, the Turkish company he buys it from, uses clarified butter for a shatteringly crisp bite and moist exterior. 

As we each enjoyed a slice, Cagirgan pulled up one last morsel: a photo of a colorful sweater his mom knit when he was about 4 or 5. 

He pointed to the smiling face wearing a toque and said, “He’s a chef.”

If you go

Phat Turk is open from 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Tuesdays to Saturdays, at Cottage Grove Public Market, 926 E. Main St., Cottage Grove. Prices start at $7 for dips, $16 for wraps and $20 for kebab plates. The Turkish food trailer is part of a vibrant food pod that includes Cocina mi Pueblo and Harley Q’s Barbecue.