layers of TRADITION

ali Eren Balikel arrived in the UK with not a word of English, however he attended language school, became fluent, and enrolled on a university Business course; Kilikyas, the only Turkish restaurant in St Katharine’s dock, is the result. Today, with warm sunlight glinting on the restaurant’s glass fronting and bringing a glow to decorative gold pipes and dark bottles of Turkish wine; jovial Turkish folk song ringing out from behind the cold meze bar; and a parade of tall sailing boats in the marina, it’s unbelievable that we’re sitting in the centre of London.

The menu is certainly authentic: a spectacular range of hot and cold mezes, house specials of musakka, biber dolma (stuffed peppers), and manti (traditional Turkish dumplings) and Iskender or Shish Kebabs – whose aromatic taste is far from what you might expect from the term ‘kebab’. Still, it is the black Turkish tea and freshly made baklava that draws in the morning crowds, and Kilikya’s particular recipe is renowned: thin filo soaked in syrup and filled with, not the usual one, but four or five layers of pistachios – grown in dry Turkish earth and brought over especially.

I’m hard pushed to stop myself giving in to a syrupy Kahvesi coffee “served with Turkish delight” too, but I refrain; the Kahvesi needs to be saved for a summer’s evening, to follow meze platters, blackberry-spiced Egeo Syrah wine and perhaps even a touch of Raki to really whisk us away.

Kilikya’s
Ivory House
St Katharine’s Dock
E1W 1AT
t: 020 7488 0813
w: www.kilikyas.com

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