Many of the most ardent fans of My Cravingz live nowhere near Manassas. But they find ways to get there. Some plan road trips around it. At least one Turkish family bought a house because it was close to the restaurant.
“To me, there’s two types of businesses,” says Serhat Yildizci, who runs the place with his family. “One, you want to be in front of as many people as possible on a busy street. Two, you’re a destination business—people want to come to you. We’ve been that kind of business.”
Breakfast will help you understand why. Bring at least three people—preferably more. The servers in the palatial marble-and-gold dining room are accustomed to parties of a dozen-plus wandering in on weekends.
It’s essential that you order the breakfast spread known as Our Serpme. First, a server will bring out glasses of reddish tea. Soon, a basket of house-baked rolls and simit—bagel-like rings of chewy sesame-studded bread—arrives. Then comes the showstopper: a huge platter lined with tiny bowls of three-berry, apricot, and fig jams; house-churned butter with honey; roasted-red-pepper, spinach, and tomato-walnut dips; olives, walnuts, almonds, dried apricots, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and grapes; and three or four varieties of white cheese and cold cuts. Jams and spreads are made with very few ingredients and taste vividly of the fruits and vegetables they’re made with.
That cold platter makes you almost forget that your order also includes zucchini fritters, cigar-shaped börek, and a choice of two sizzling egg dishes— sucuklu yumurta (fried eggs layered with slices of sausage) and menemen (a tomatoey scramble) are good options.
The goofy name My Cravingz is apt. It’s a restaurant that was essentially willed into existence by the collective appetite of Northern Virginia’s Turkish community.
Serhat’s mother, Leyla Yildizci, was a stay-at-home mom in Leesburg when she decided to do a favor for a family friend: She would bake simit and börek to help stock the shelves of his new grocery store. Soon, those orders turned into a home business. In 2017, the Yildizcis took over a wholesale bakery space.
One morning, a customer of the store knocked on the bakery’s front door. He’d found their address and wanted the freshest possible pastries. Serhat’s dad, Salih, told him it wasn’t a place for customers—tables were dusted with flour and the desk covered in paperwork.
The man wasn’t having it. The next day, he came back and Salih gave him some free pastries and tea. A day later, the man returned with his wife, paid for his meal, and the couple posted pictures of their breakfast. After a week, another Turkish family called asking to bring in a party of 14 friends and family members.
And so the Yildizcis bought cheap furniture from Ikea, and Leyla prepared a full serpme spread as she would for a guest in her home. Word traveled fast, and in 2018 the family signed a lease on the restaurant space they now occupy.
This year, a renovation has turned the dining room a little glitzier and grander. But you don’t get the impression that the Yildizcis’ most loyal customers care much one way or the other. They were the ones who sat around on Ikea tables in an industrial bakery just to get their Turkish breakfast.
Ike Allen covers politics, food, culture, and transportation in DC and writes the monthly Hidden Eats column for the magazine. He grew up in DC.
