Shoreditch, Turkish Restaurant Guide

Selin Kiazim’s “incredible” Turkish-Cypriot cooking “delivers every time” at her six-year-old Shoreditch venture, and is “paired with a great list of Turkish wines” by Laura Christie, who runs the front of house. The pair’s spin-off in Fitzrovia, first called Kyseri and later Oklava Bakery & Wine, closed down in 2020.

With its swish, spacious metropolitan styling, this 100-seater brasserie on one of Shoreditch’s main drags does little to advertise the fact that it’s part of the Hart Shoreditch Hotel London (part of the Curio Collection by Hilton), which opened in early 2020. Knowing this helps explain the slightly over-plush styling – at odds with the strenuously hip neighbourhood – and also the wilfully un-corporate menu: inspired by the flavours of Levantine coastal towns (Levantine weekend brunch is a feature). Early reports are too limited for a rating, but all-round very good.

“Exceedingly large portions of simple, fresh and tasty Turkish food” draw a busy lunchtime crowd to this group of six restaurants within a mile or two of each other in the City. “The meat especially is good quality”, while social distancing has had its compensations: “tables were further apart, which made for easier conversation”.

In a quiet, pedestrianised square in the City’s sprawling Broadgate development – near Broadgate Circle – this January 2020 arrival occupies a swishly decorated unit, and has a large terrace outside for a warm day. The rustic Anatolian cuisine – much of it on the open-flame mangal – is cosily at odds with all the surrounding modernity, and is washed down with a more metropolitan selection of cocktails.