The right combination
Ti Amo’s new owner cooks up a little bit of home

Take the elevator to the top of Shoppes at the Creek and you’ll see a romantic couple painted on the wall–an alluring pair out on the town–he with a flower in his teeth, she with a martini in her hand. “Ti Amo,” it says, and when you realize that the painting has two torsos sharing a single pair of legs, you understand the motif: In food, like in love, it’s all about the right combination.

Since it opened, Ti Amo has been Cave Creek’s primo romantic dining spot, with an elegance and flair reflected in a blend of classic Italian dishes with Mediterranean influences. Now, it’s about to do itself one better.

There’s a new cook in town. He’s from the Mediterranean and one of Ti Amo’s new owners. Ati   Hicyilmaz, new executive chef of Ti Amo, recently arrived from his native Turkey with wife and co‑owner Helen, who is handling the floor operations at the restaurant.

Ati Hicyilmaz’s culinary training in Padua, Italy, during the 1980s soon led him to own and operate three locations of his high‑end restaurant Havana in Istanbul and Bodrum, Turkey. At Havana, Hicyilmaz specialized in an eclectic Mediterranean menu that proved very popular in the region.

He’s bringing that expertise and knowledge of the flavors and nuances of Med cuisine to Ti Amo to enhance the Italian menu. The basic menu that has been making Creekers toast the chef since Ti Amo opened will remain intact. But Hicyilmaz is designing an exciting array of daily specials that will have the Mediterranean breeze blowing in off the foothills through Ti Amo’s romantic patio and right onto your fork.

“It’s not the basic Italian seasoning,” Hicyilmaz explains. “It’s a special blend of everything from the Mediterranean.”

Mediterranean, Hicyilmaz says, is often misapplied in America to describe food that is more Middle Eastern in nature. The true Mediterranean cuisine, he says, is a rich and diverse blend of many cuisines, drawing a sauce from here, an herb from there, and a technique from another country altogether.

It’s a tasty complexity he’s been layering on Ti Amo’s menu: duck from France, paella from Spain, and the mighty, bold salad from Greece. These are the delights that add a new dimension to the Italian cuisine at Ti Amo. And what a culinary crime it would be without a tasty treasure from Ati’s homeland–the Turkish dish “rotola,” a melange of white and green and red, chicken and spinach rolled in pasta with fontina and mascarpone cheese dressed with marinara.