A New Turkish Food Truck Serves Some of the Best Adana Kebab in the Bay Area

I have a rule where anytime I spot a busy food truck, I’ll make a brief detour to check it out, even if it means pulling across three lanes on the highway — much to the dismay of my passengers.

That’s how I first discovered Chefmus, a modest-looking Turkish food trailer wedged between a gas station and tire shop in Mountain View. From the main street, you can’t see the dining tables or the crowd of customers swarming the trailer. But when I peeked inside the window, I saw a full-on pyrotechnics show: a variety of meat kebabs, jalapeños, tomatoes and onions grilled over a live flame until they were heavily charred.

The menu features only three items: lamb shish kebab, chicken shish kebab and, the truck’s biggest claim to fame, the minced lamb skewers known as Adana kebab. These glistening kebabs are scorched on the grill until they develop a crunchy shell, then tightly wrapped in a flour tortilla along with tomatoes, onion and a spritz of lemon juice. The meat is so tender it hardly requires chewing.

Brothers Seyhumus and Emir Artik moved to the US from their hometown of Istanbul, Turkey, in 2021. Although the city of Adana is on the other side of the country, the Artiks grew up eating Adana-style kebabs as it’s one of the most popular street foods all across Turkey. Still, Seyhumus says he was never taught how to make the kebabs when he attended culinary school in Istanbul. Instead, he picked up the skill while working at a hotel restaurant in Taksim.

When the brothers opened Chefmus this past December, their goal was to share the depth of Turkish cuisine with the Bay Area. Familiar grilled meats like kebabs and köfte seemed like a good place to start.

“Turkish people come for Adana kebab because it’s hard to find in the Bay Area,” Seyhumus says. While the dish is a staple on Turkish restaurant menus, proper Adana — fire-roasted and intensely lamby, with meticulously ground meat — is incredibly rare. In the Bay Area, most restaurants make their Adana with lamb scraps or a mix of lamb and beef instead of grinding the proper cuts of lamb, he says.

So, Seyhumus decided that Chefmus should focus on mastering Adana kebab. The dish is traditionally made by mincing lamb with a curved blade known as a zirh knife. Seyhumus uses the zirh he ordered from Turkey to finely chop a minimum of 10 pounds of halal lamb each day. Even though a lot of other kebab shops use a machine to grind their meat, Seyhumus is opposed to that shortcut because it produces a dense, chewy texture akin to sausage. Chefmus’ coarsely chopped lamb — a mix of shoulder and rib meat — is looser and more tender. It’s only salted and lightly seasoned with red pepper to allow the flavor of the lamb to shine. The ground meat is massaged onto a long, blade-like skewer known as a shish). After grilling, the kebabs are juicy with a hint of smokiness. They’re served wrapped in flour tortillas, as the Artiks have yet to find a source for pide, the traditional Turkish flatbread. Even still, this is the best Adana-style kebab I’ve had in the Bay.

The brothers tag-team the food trailer — Seyhumus takes the first shift to prepare the meats, and Emir takes over in the afternoon to cook until they sell out. Emir was working as an Uber driver and decided to get into the food business to support his brother even though he never had any prior restaurant experience. Both brothers say they see Chefmus as more than just a business venture. It’s a way to connect with people in the community.

“Right now, 50% of our customers are Turkish,” says Emir. “Others have never tried Turkish food.” Many customers tell the brothers they feel like they’re eating a meal in Turkey.

Chefmus also offers rotating dishes like sütlaç (rice pudding) and mercimek çorbası (lentil soup). On the first day of Ramadan this year, Seyhumus prepared lamb shanks that he cooked for four hours. “I’m not sure if these things will be on the menu permanently,” says Emir, noting that they’ll usually announce these specials on their Instagram page. “We’re always going to do new things, but not every day.”

If a dish is extremely popular, like their recent beef köfte, it’ll join the permanent roster. Seyhumus declined to share any of the fourteen secret spices he uses in his köfte, but the results speak for themselves: Grilled over the flame, these meatballs were earthy and aromatic, and especially tasty when tucked into a crunchy baguette with sliced onions and tomatoes. The advantage of having a limited menu is being able to focus on each dish. The chicken kebab, for example, is marinated for 24 hours.

Emir and Seyhumus already have plans for opening a second Chefmus location in Santa Clara later this year and perhaps eventually a restaurant. Meanwhile, Seyhumus says his true passion has always been desserts — specifically, San Sebastian cheesecake (aka Basque cheesecake) topped with Belgian chocolate. Before opening the food truck, he’d dreamed of starting a cheesecake business. He held off on selling desserts at the food trailer due to lack of space, but he says he’s eager to return to his roots as a pastry chef someday.

“Maybe I will open a coffee shop with desserts,” he says. “First, I want people to know us and what we sell.”

Chefmus is open Monday through Saturday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. and Sunday 1–8 p.m. at 101 E. El Camino Real in Mountain View.