The best Turkish restaurants on Green Lanes
Gokyuzu
26-27 Grand Parade, Green Lanes, N4
Recently ranked second only to Gordon Ramsay's Petrus on TripAdvisor’s review chart, this humble neighbourhood restaurant really does offer the best value eating out I know anywhere in London. You are always immediately given some good warm flatbread and a yoghurt and cucumber dip and then a huge, strikingly fresh rough-chopped salad — strong rocket, cucumber, red onion, red cabbage, coarse-grated carrot, scattered with sumac, dressed with oil and served with lemon. Then there’s a range of pide cooked in a wood-fired oven — thin Turkish pizza lookalikes, often topped with minced lamb and different vegetables. Or there are brilliant charcoal grills served with rice and salad — two quail for £10.50, for example, or minced lamb adana kebab, £7 for a small one, £9.90 for large. The difficulty is in not eating too much. The “platters to share” are immense — they reckon one that features lamb shish, chicken shish, lamb ribs, adana shish, chicken wings, chicken doner and lamb doner with salad and rice and bulgur wheat for £25.50 is for two to three people to share. Two to three giants, perhaps.
Antepliler
46 Grand Parade, Green Lanes, N4
Dimmer lighting, lower chairs and slightly spicier cooking, with particularly good pide made in a huge clay oven and fabulously good crisp lahmacun (only £1.50!) People from Gaziantep say it is just as good as anywhere there.
020 8802 5588
Hala
29 Grand Parade, Green Lanes, N4
A small, more traditional restaurant. In the window you can see women assiduously rolling out pastry to make gözleme, delicious pastries stuffed with spinach, mince, cheese or potato. The manti — meat dumplings — here are the best, too.
Selale
1-2 Salisbury Promenade, Green Lanes, N4
This restaurant has recently expanded into one particularly large and canteen-like room with some garish decorations — but the welcome and food are the equal of anywhere in Green Lanes. Such generous samples of bread and dips — hummus, tzatziki etc — are brought to the table free, making it unnecessary to have any other starter, and the main courses — excellent chicken sarma beyti, say, for £9 — are elegantly presented as well as in whopping portions. The owner, one commenter on excellent local website harringayonline.com rightly observes, resembles a Turkish Robert De Niro.
Flame
551 Green Lanes, N4
Flame is much smaller, slightly pricier and has a rather more ambitious menu with plenty of seafood, some of it on display in the front window.
020 8340 9691
Devran
485-487 Green Lanes, N4
Big, always bustling and very good value, with a longer menu than most, venturing into specialities such as Albanian liver and lamb sweetbreads, as well as catering better for vegetarians than many Turkish restaurants.
Diyarbakir
69 Grand Parade, Green Lanes, N4
Diyarbakir, which is halal and serves soft drinks only, is small, packed and selling out some of its fresh produce each day, is rated by many Turkish customers as serving the very best food in the area.
020 8809 2777
MORE ABOUT