A Turkish delight with porch-side kebabs and fresh-baked pitas in South Jersey

If you get the feeling you’re being watched as the mixed-grill platter laden with fragrant adana kebabs and lamb chops lands on your al fresco table at Oba Mediterranean Grill, you’re not entirely mistaken.

There are 400 eyes dangling on cobalt blue glass amulets amid strings of white flowers that sway in the gentle Collingswood breezes drifting through the gracious porch seating of this converted Victorian home on Haddon Avenue. Known in Turkish as a nazar boncuğu, these disc-shaped beads are believed to guard against the “evil eye,” and owner Ayhan Yuksel isn’t taking any chances.

“You never know where the ‘bad eyes’ and jealous looks are coming from,” he said, only half-joking. “Believe me: One of them cracks and falls every day around here because it is protecting us.”

Yuksel, 57, is a man understandably steeped in hyper vigilance, a former body guard in the Turkish National Intelligence Organization who says he protected President George Bush Sr. and Barbara Bush during their visit to Istanbul in the early 1990s.

In the restaurant business, however, good food is the best defense. And an artfully layered döner kebab sizzling on the spit, as well as a show oven near the front door turning out fresh-baked pides — the canoe-shaped bread boats more akin to stuffed pizzas than plain pitas — are fortuitous signs for this three-year-old restaurant on the residential outskirts of Collingswood’s vibrant downtown district.

Oba has one of the most satisfying traditional Turkish kitchens in the region right now. From the moment a fresh pita arrived to our table puffing hot steam like a sesame-dusted balloon alongside a pinwheel tray of excellent mezze dips, Oba’s kitchen delivered a canon of classic Turkish dishes with finesse.

The hand-chopped ezme pepper and tomato salad is sweet with pomegranate molasses and spicy with chile heat, but also with a mysterious whiff of smoke; it comes from Mexican chipotles in adobo, whose raisin-y, campfire aroma mingles seamlessly with the Anatolian spices.

If there’s an extra tang to the yogurt covering the tiny manti dumplings stuffed with oniony ground beef and mint, that’s because it’s cultured in house — and also infused with a boost of garlic upon request.

Yuksel, who immigrated to the United States in 1994 and settled among South Jersey’s longstanding Turkish community, owned the Old City restaurant Konak for six years in the early 2000s. But he’s primarily a builder who owns A&V Construction, which produces hundreds of houses a year as well as larger projects, like the Masjid Ar-Rahman mosque in Southwest Philadelphia. His return to the dining scene with Oba, the name of which refers to the nomadic ancestors who preceded the Ottoman empire, is a passion project.

“The restaurant is just my hobby because I love food and I want to show people how great Turkish food can be if we’re using good, organic stuff,” he says.

His quest led him to chef Hakan Guler, 42, whom he hired from an Istanbul restaurant operated by Nusret Gökçe, the Turkish butcher-chef best known as “Salt Bae” for his once-viral “Ottoman steak.” No, there are no salt crystals flung by a ponytailed chef in sunglasses across the polished wood floors, white linens, and aqua-blue upholstery of Oba’s dining room. You want to see an evil eye? Send that salt circus my way.

Guler has instead embraced a steady behind-the-scenes role here with a focus on traditional standards that Yuksel admires.

“He can be difficult to work with because he’s very strict,” says Yusksel, who describes the chef as particular about everything from the special hand soap — “no chemicals!” — to the quality of the never-frozen, grass-fed, halal beef from Leader Meats in Chesterfield, Burlington County. “He wants veal tenderloins, so we pay $22 a pound.”

Ingredients are only a starting point. In a menu focused on dishes that can be found in a dozen other Turkish restaurants across the Philly region, the difference between good and great can be found in the embrace of the tiny details that define a chef’s touch.

The pureed red lentil soup has an extra depth of sweetness from sun-dried tomatoes to counter the spice of urfa peppers and the garlicky ping of dried ramps. The hummus has a deliberately coarse texture and tahini-forward flavor profile, which has a rustic appeal. When you top it with olive oil, paprika, and crispy ribbons of Turkish pastrami, the dried meat’s smoky, fragrant perfume of fenugreek, all-spice, and garlic adds extra dimensions to the familiar dip.

The falafel looks standard, but is excellent, too, the centers exceptionally moist from the addition of celery. The shepherd salad is also a great example of how seemingly simple dishes, dressed with little more than olive oil, lemon and parsley, can become resonant when ripe Amish tomatoes are paired with the crunch of Persian cucumbers. The addition of white anchovies over top is an unexpected but lovely flourish that’s a reminder that Turkey is also a country of coastal wonders. The calamari are also fantastic, soaked in milk for two days to tenderize them before they’re fried into a delicate crisp.

Yuksel had hoped to focus more on seafood here, and the crispy-skinned grilled branzino makes a case for that. But Collingswood diners have gravitated more towards Oba’s meatier offerings, and I can’t blame them.

The lamb shish kebabs are marinated overnight in milk with garlic before they’re roasted on sword-like skewers over the grill. The lamb and chicken adana kebabs are hand-minced the old-fashioned way with a special knife called a zirh, whose long, moon-shaped blade incorporates the urfa and antep pepper spices into the meat with a nuance that’s otherwise lost in the rough chop of a food processor.

The mixed grill is a perfect way to taste all the meat, including the char-edged chicken, lamb chops, and house gyro (or döner). It’s a fair value combo platter for two at $37; it can be multiplied into a much larger centerpiece to feed a crowd, like the plank-sized feast I saw anchoring a table of 10 at the center of Oba’s lively 70-seat dining room. (There are 50 more seats on the wrap-around heated porch.)

I prefer the meats separately. This is especially true of the gyro, a pillar of cumin-y, ground top round layered with alternating sheets of meat sliced from lamb and beef ribs. It marinates for 24 hours with onion juice and yogurt before it’s set to spin on the vertical rotisserie.

You’ll want to try it as part of one of my all-time favorite dishes, the Iskendar kebab. This platter brings sliced gyro with spiced tomato sauce and a cooling scoop of fresh yogurt over a bed of ripped pita that’s been doused in rich butter imported from the Turkish province of Trabzon.

Another surprise here were the flattened Turkish meatballs, also called Sivas köfte — a regional specialty I’ve not noticed on any other local menu — which consists of a half-dozen slim patties of ground veal breast grilled in the style of Yuklas’ home city of Sivas in Central Turkey that were incredibly flavorful despite being seasoned with only salt.

Oba’s menu is large, and if you end up over-ordering out of curiosity as I did, you might risk a gentle scolding from the friendly-yet-serious dining room staff overseen by manager Mustafa Bolat. (“That’s too much!”) Take home the leftovers. You absolutely must try some of the fresh-baked specialties coming from the oven that greets arriving guests at the front door, especially the pides.

I’ve had many pides before, but these were especially memorable, and Yuksel says the key is a simple, fresh dough made daily using ice water, whose chill fosters a gentle, slow fermentation. The result is a black-and white sesame-specked dough that’s exceptionally thin and crispy, yet also pliant enough to cradle an array of appealing fillings between its folds.

The pide stuffed with cubes of filet mignon, peppers, and cheese would be my meat choice (or the pastrami). But I especially admired the vegetarian offerings because the pies stuffed with little more than a molten channel of tangy feta cheese and peppers showed off the delicacy of the crust.

Oba’s lahmachun, meanwhile, are equally delicious. The broad flatbread is smeared with a thin paste of ground lamb, tomatoes, peppers, and spices that’s more about the zesty harmony of the purée than the meat itself. Tear off a fistful from the warm sheets, fold it around a fistful of crunchy raw red onions and parsley, add a squeeze of lemon, and good luck not eating it all.

Oba has a complement of traditional sweets to finish the meal. The buttery baklava is excellent, even if it’s not made here. A hot pan of delicious kunefe, with white hatay cheese baked beneath a crunchy nest of shredded kataifi dough doused in sweet syrup, is a can’t-miss choice for your Instagram cheese-pull dreams.

My favorite dessert was the seemingly most straightforward pairing of all: an intense demitasse of Turkish coffee with a hot crock of milky rice pudding. What subtle extra flourish made it so irresistible, with a hint of fruity sweetness and peppery finish? It’s a splash of olive oil, says Yuklas, “but not too much!”

It’s just the kind of grace note a knowing chef can add to take something familiar to a special new place. Of course, it’s no secret to the 400 watching eyes that sway like a blue-and-white forcefield of positivity around this old Victorian house. But the fact that the food here is so reliably excellent is all that Oba Medirranean Grill needs to make a fan out of me.

563 Haddon Ave., Collingswood, 856-858-6666; oba-restaurant.com

Open Wednesday through Monday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Closed Tuesday.

Dinner entrees, $15.95-$37.

There are several gluten-free options, with precautions to avoid cross-contamination.

Wheelchair accessible.

Menu highlights: hummus with pastrami; spicy ezme; falafel; icli köfta; mixed appetizers; mixed grill; Iskender kebab; Sivas köfta; lamachun; pides (feta, filet mignon); kunefe; rice pudding.

BYOB.