Two of the most ordered dishes on any Turkish menu are İskender and Adana. People often assume they are variations of the same thing, because both arrive as grilled meat on a plate and both get called "kebab" in English. In Turkey they are treated as completely different dishes, from different parts of the country, made by different methods, and eaten for different reasons.
If you have ever stood at a counter in Pattaya trying to decide between them, this should settle it.
The short answer
Adana is minced lamb, seasoned with red pepper, pressed by hand onto a flat skewer and grilled over charcoal. It is spicy, smoky and dry in the best sense. İskender is thin slices of döner laid over pieces of pide bread, covered in a hot tomato sauce, finished with melted butter and served with yoghurt on the side. It is rich, tangy and not spicy at all. One is about fire. The other is about sauce.
Where each one comes from
Adana kebab takes its name from the city of Adana in southern Turkey, near the Mediterranean coast. The region is hot, the food is heavily spiced, and the kebab reflects that. In Adana the dish is protected by tradition: the meat must be lamb, hand chopped rather than machine minced, and mixed with tail fat and red pepper flakes. The spice level is not decoration, it is the point.
İskender comes from Bursa, in the northwest, and it has a known inventor. İskender Efendi is credited with turning the vertical döner spit into a plated dish in the late 1800s by slicing the meat over bread and pouring tomato sauce and butter over the top. It is a much younger dish than Adana, and a much gentler one.
How the meat is prepared
This is the real dividing line. Adana starts as raw minced lamb that is seasoned, rested, then shaped onto a wide flat skewer and cooked to order over open charcoal. Every portion is grilled fresh, and the cooking takes minutes. The flat skewer matters, because it lets the heat reach the centre of the meat without drying the outside.
İskender starts as döner. Whole cuts of marinated lamb are stacked onto a vertical spit and roasted slowly for hours while the spit turns. The outer layer is shaved off in thin ribbons as it cooks. So an İskender is built from meat that has already been cooking for a long time, while an Adana is grilled the moment you order it.
Spice, sauce and richness
Adana carries its heat inside the meat itself, from the red pepper worked through the mince. There is no sauce poured over it. It arrives with rice, grilled tomato and pepper, and bread, and the flavour is smoke and spice.
İskender has almost no chilli heat. Its intensity comes from the combination of tomato sauce, butter and yoghurt hitting the bread underneath, which soaks everything up. It is the richer plate of the two by a wide margin, and the cool yoghurt is there to balance the butter rather than as a side.
Which should you order?
Order Adana if you want charcoal flavour and a bit of heat, if you are eating with others and sharing grilled dishes, or if you want something that does not sit heavily afterwards. It also works best if you like tearing bread and building your own bites.
Order İskender if you want comfort food, if chilli is not for you, or if you want a single complete plate rather than a spread. It is the more filling of the two, so most people order it on its own rather than alongside starters.
Both, at Istanbul Restaurant Pattaya
We serve both from the same kitchen on South Pattaya Road. Our Adana Kebab (฿350) is grilled to order on the ocakbaşı charcoal grill and served with baked potatoes, rice and vegetables. Our İskender (฿450) is made from our own lamb döner, sliced over bread with tomato sauce, butter and yoghurt.
If you cannot choose, there is a third option. The Adana Kebab Roll (฿200) wraps the same charcoal grilled Adana in soft lavash, which is the easier version to eat if you are in a hurry or taking it away.
Everything we cook is halal, and both dishes appear on our grills menu and Turkish traditional menu. You can browse the full menu before you visit, or contact us to book a table. We are open every day from 11:00 AM until 1:00 AM.