Meat Lovers Paradise

A few years back Rick Stein spoke lovingly of an ocakbasi (a Turkish barbecue restaurant) called Mangal Ocakbasi on Arcola Street in Dalston.  I have eaten there and it is indeed a fine restaurant, whilst the food is great it suffers from being a bring-your-own beer place with a single menu on the wall outside the restaurant.  Good food and great prices but not the most refined.  Due to this when I want a ocakbasi fix I tend to eat at its sister restaurant Mangal 2 just around the corner on Kingsland Road.  The food here is equally as good and has the added advantage of being a tad more upmarket with individual menus and Efes, a Turkish beer, on sale.

Ocakbasis (pronounced ojakbashi I believe) tend to have a big fire pit in the middle of the restaurant where a seated Turkish man sits sweating and cooking skewer after skewer of meat, fish and offal.  The food's simple, well seasoned fare served with Turkish bread and salad.  On previous occasions I've gone for the mixed kebab with quail (pictured above) but on that occasion I fancied some offal so asked the waiter if we could make out own mixed kebab.  He said fine so for the three of us we asked for a chicken and lamb with yoghurt sauce and then plain grilled kidneys, sweetbreads, chicken and lamb shish.  I'd been telling our guest that the portions here were huge and when the food arrived it was no exception.  Even with two reasonable sized lads it was struggle to eat it all but in the end we succeeded.  When the bill arrived we were shocked to see that to make our mixed grill they'd just combined 6 main courses and so we'd managed to eat 6 main courses between the three of us - no wonder it was hard work.  On top of our mammoth eating feat that night was also marked by the somewhat eccentric artists Gilbert and George being sat on the table next to us.  What more could you want in an evening?

Last weekend I decided to go again and was surprised to see Gilbert and George sat in exactly the same seats they'd been sat before - I can only assume that 8 o'clock on a Saturday night is regular for them.  I decided to let the similarities between the evenings end there though and ordered the aforementioned mixed kebab with quail.  For £13.95 you get a chicken wing, a lamb chop, a deboned and rolled lamb chop, an adana (minced lamb) kofte, a few chunks of cubed lamb and a whole quail.  All expertly seasoned (think lots of salt) and grilled till full of smokey, charred flavour yet still beautifully most.  This comes with a pile of salad and a basketful of Turkish bread, there's a lot of food to get down but it's so good it's hard to leave any, well leave any meat anyway.

So if you fancy some fantastic Turkish Barbecue and some artist spotting get yourself to Mangal 2, Stoke Newington Road on a Saturday evening.  If you just want the fantastic food go whatever time suits you better.

Comments

[Lizzie]

Mmmm meat! That looks like a feast fit for a king. I had the quail at an ocakbasi once but I found it rather too fiddly to really get stuck in to. I'll make a note to try the sweetbreads next time, I've never had them before.

[Ros]

They have sweetbreads!? As soon as Andy gets back from Leeds, we're going!

[Joshua Armstrong]

The sweetbreads are pretty tasty there, I'm not normally the biggest fan of them but when done over coals they have a bit more texture and a nice smokey flavour.