This is a local Turkish restaurant near where a friend of mine works. She has been recommending this restaurant to me for a while so a couple of weeks ago I decided to pay this restaurant a visit.
Let me say from the outset that I was not disappointed. As I often do, I ordered a Doner Kebab. The Doner kebab is often considered to be so low quality that many kebab shops and other establishments do not take care when selling lamb doners so that they are often made with poor quality meat that is greasy and highly processed.
In the Istanbul I was in for a very pleasant surprise however. Firstly the meat was more obviously slices of lamb than you would find in most kebab shops. It was more like a shawama lamb kebab like that which is often found in Lebanese restaurants. This involves serving a kebab of small chunks of lamb that have been marinated in spices and served quite dry with a chilli sauce if desired. This meat was served with rice, bulgur wheat and a salad of lots of cabbage, onion, cucumber and tomato and a dressing that I am told contained pomegranate. There was also a very generous basket of warm Turkish bread provided and for £5.50 each I can assure you that we both were absolutely stuffed to the brim!
OK, the lam was perhaps a little greasy. Not swimming in grease but greasy as lamb can often be. The taste however along with the feeling of eating proper lamb rather than mashed up rubbish really made up for this. the well cooked rice and bulgur wheat, crisp fresh tasty salad and high quality Turkish bread really made this restaurant shine as a beacon of quality and affordability.
It can take a while to prepare the kebab so don’t go to this restaurant if you are pushed for time. Other than this, unless you are a vegetarian of course, I can see no reason not to travel some distance to get to this restaurant.
I have no hesitation in giving it 8.5 out of 10 for decent quality and excellent value for money.
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