Not long ago I asked readers if they could forgive Buzkashi for not being the Helmand (a very fine Afghan restaurant), and accept it as a pleasant, less-expensive, somewhat-funkier alternative. Now I’m in the same position with Brookline Family Restaurant, in Brookline Village, which is not quite the Istanbul Café (a superb Middle Eastern restaurant), but again a pleasant, less-expensive, and somewhat-funkier alternative. However, while Afghan food is a fusion cuisine that can be accented in many ways, Turkish food is one of the mother cuisines. Istanbul Café is a mother that does a lot of little things right; Brookline Family Restaurant is a mother that really pushes food across the table. Istanbul Café adds a lot of finesse to Middle Eastern food; Brookline Family Restaurant is no finesse, all power.

It looks like a spiffed-up greasy spoon, and therein lies a tale. The space was an undistinguished pizza joint until purchased by the Greek-American owners of the Family Restaurant in Brookline’s Washington Square, a rather soulful Greek restaurant of very modest appearance. After a decent run, they sold it to the present Turkish owners. (Given the historic tensions between Greeks and Turks, the broker of this sale must be quite a diplomat.) The good news is that the food is livelier than ever; the only problem with Turkish food is that three weeks later, you’re hungry again.

I knew what we were in for on the first meal, when a special on "istim kebab" ($11.95) came with not one but two lamb shanks, each wrapped in eggplant and topped with peppers and tomatoes, accompanied by a large grilled tomato, a large roast potato, and a double helping of pilaf. This is not a diet restaurant.

Dinner begins with a soft, sesame-topped flatbread, more like a challah than a pita. (At lunch, service is cafeteria-style, so you carry your own plate of bread back to the table.) Among the appetizers, one of the best things I tasted was a special on tripe soup ($2.50/small; $3.50/large), a kind of white chowder with tender bits of tripe and a rich flavor. I also liked the "lahmacun" ($3.50), pronounced and flavored like the Armenian lamejun, but a softer and spicier lamb flatbread. The stuffed baby eggplant ($6.45), full of sautéed onions and bell peppers, was greasy but good.

A "Turkish pastrami pita" ($10.50) is flatter, more crisp, and more pizza-like than the same dish at Istanbul, an excellent appetizer for four or dinner for one or two. The basturma is a hard cured beef, but surprisingly good with tomato and cheese. On the other hand, I found the falafel ($5.50) and hummus ($4.75) filling but dull. The former are four cones of greenish fried-bean purée, the latter a full plate of sticky hummus topped with paprika and served with more of the sesame breads.

Entrées tend to be built on aircraft carriers of pilaf, almost always with tomatoes and/or a shepherd’s salad with cucumber and onions, and frequently a deadly-hot broiled green chili pepper. To work through the kebabs, I started with the first Turkish food I ever ate, a donner-kebab sandwich ($5.95), much improved over the ones that were my favorite street food in Jerusalem in 1967. In particular, the Family Restaurant donner kebab has excellent crust, the way a gyro is supposed to but almost never does. The sesame bread is also an improvement over pitas, and the shepherd’s salad is a superior condiment for the dish. Donner kebab should be made of the trimmings from a rotating spit of lamb built up from thin slices. I think this stuff was made of ground lamb, but it was still a delectable sandwich.

Adana kebab is long strips of spiced ground meat; my first approach was the chicken adana kebab with yogurt sauce ($11.50). This is a lot of chicken strips, rather too salty, served over croutons of the sesame bread with no pilaf, plenty of salad, and the deadly pepper — only somewhat moderated by a sauce of homemade garlic yogurt

On the mixed grill ($12.50), the adana kebab was lamb-based, and not too salty at all, although the plate was dominated for me by three kebabs of tender lamb and three of excellent chicken. There was also a patty of kofta, yet another lamb sausage with a little more spice. Then there were mountains of pilaf and bits of salad, as well as shredded carrots without dressing, presumably so you can see your way to the cardiologist.

The istim kebab is not really a kebab as we understand it, but a dish of stewed lamb shanks, nicely flavored. For a more explicit stew, still in the key of lamb, try the "okra" ($8.75), a best buy, since it also includes lots of lamb chunks and enough pilaf to feed an entire caravan. Watch out for that pepper, which seems to season whole areas of this stew.

There are lots of good things to drink with this food, headed up by Turkey’s Efes beer ($4.50), a strong, clean pilsner. Two Turkish wines are listed, but it’s hard to make out much by the glass. Kavaklidere ($5.95/glass; $25/bottle) is actually a vineyard near Ankara that produces several different wines. This one is a white, somewhat like the old California Chablis made with chenin blanc grapes. Okuzgozu ($5.95/$25) is a red-grape variety, grown in eastern Turkey, but this one is just smooth, hot, and simple, like a hot-climate merlot. You’re probably better off with good old Black Opal shiraz ($5.25/$22).

Turkish tea ($1.25) is served in a glass, and tastes like over-brewed Ceylon, a little bitter. Turkish coffee ($1.50) is thick stuff. When you sip off the essence, you can whirl the grounds around and tip the cup upside down. After a few minutes, you can read your future in the patterns of the grounds. Ice water is available but not always refilled often enough.

Desserts are rather a strength. Kunefe ($3.95) was actually better than I remember it at that other Turkish restaurant. This one is a hot, round flat cake of honeyed shreds with a thin filling of light cheese, almost as light as custard. Kazandibi ($3.50), overly sweet at the other place, is here an exercise in caramel flavor, on a basis of sweet pudding allegedly made from noodles. Rice pudding ($2.50) is simple, rich, and dusted with cinnamon. A baklava "in a different shape" ($2.50) is a sweet but delectable pastry with more pistachio filling than we usually see.

The imposition of nicer fixtures on the shell of an old pizza shop makes the Family Restaurant into something like an old-fashioned Cambridge ethnic restaurant. The best of the décor includes richly woven tablecloths under glass and clothing and napery hung on the walls. Our servers were generally just fine, and the atmosphere is of Brookline people who are playing it fairly cool that they’ve wandered into an exotic restaurant and are able to pig out like it was 1979.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.