From Green Lanes to Soho: London’s Turkish Restaurants Are Having Their Finest Hour

The capital’s Turkish dining scene has always been much more than kebabs and baklava. In 2026, it is one of the most dynamic, inventive and emotionally resonant food stories in the city.

There is a moment, sometime in the mid-1970s, when the first wave of Turkish and Kurdish migrants arrived in North London with nothing but their culinary traditions and an unshakeable belief that the food they had grown up with was worth sharing. Half a century later, standing on Green Lanes in Harringay — breathing in the charcoal smoke drifting from an ocakbaşı grill, watching towers of syrup-lacquered baklava glitter in a bakery window — it is impossible not to feel the weight of that journey.

But London’s Turkish food story does not end on Green Lanes. In 2026, it extends from Dalston to Soho, from King’s Cross to the City, encompassing everything from humble family-run ocakbaşı grills to Michelin-radar tasting menus that reinterpret Anatolian flavours through the lens of contemporary gastronomy. Turkish cuisine, long beloved in its London heartlands, has arrived — quietly, confidently, without fanfare — at the centre of the city’s fine dining conversation.

Here is TBMag’s essential guide to the restaurants making that argument most compellingly.

Yeni, Soho — Where Anatolian Flavour Becomes Art

The lapis blue facade on Beak Street is almost deliberately understated — no sign proclaiming ambition, no queue-baiting theatre. Inside, exposed brick walls, pastel green tiled tabletops and open shelves of spice jars create a setting that feels simultaneously minimalist and warm. This is Yeni, the London offshoot of Istanbul’s acclaimed Yeni Lokanta, and it is perhaps the city’s most compelling argument that Turkish cuisine belongs at the very top table of world gastronomy.

Chef Civan Er’s approach is precise and personal: Anatolian flavours refracted through a contemporary fine-dining prism, presented with an elegance that would not be out of place in a two-star kitchen anywhere in Europe. The signature yeni mantı — crispy, bouncy dumplings served in a brothy fermented yoghurt sauce, decorated with dots of emerald green and amber oils — looks like a kaleidoscope and tastes like a revelation. A square of grilled aubergine with Colston Bassett cheese and smoked almonds, sweetened with port and fig, is the kind of dish that makes you reconsider everything you thought you knew about meze. For the full experience, the tasting menu is essential.

Yeni, 55 Beak Street, W1F 9SH

The Counter, Soho — Anatolian Soul with a Cocktail Bar

Chef Kemal Demirasal’s second London venture on Kingly Street does something that very few Turkish restaurants in the city attempt: it builds a genuinely compelling bar programme around the food rather than treating drinks as an afterthought. The subterranean bar — fitted with a quality sound system for vinyl evenings and DJ sets — sets the tone. A Cardamom Whispers cocktail, bringing together fig leaf soda, cardamom-infused gin and white pepper cordial, is the kind of drink that makes you want to stay all evening.

The food earns that loyalty. White chocolate baba ganoush retains its signature smokiness while introducing complementary hints of sweetness — a stroke of ingenuity that runs through the menu. Alongside distinctly Anatolian dishes, The Counter draws on Greek, Levantine and Aegean coastal influences: mastelo cheese saganaki with truffle honey and pistachios, herby prawns cooked in metaxa spirit, sujuk with clotted cream and cherry. It is a restaurant that understands that Turkish cuisine has always been in conversation with its neighbours, and is better for it.

The Counter, 15 Kingly Street, W1B 5PS

Firin, King’s Cross — The Neighbourhood Hearth

Named for the Turkish word for oven or bakery, Firin does exactly what its name suggests: it builds an entire culinary philosophy around the large central oven that dominates the intimate dining room on York Way, a short walk from King’s Cross’s gleaming development but firmly planted in neighbourhood territory.

The results are extraordinary. A lamb tandir — slow-cooked to the point of dissolution, swimming in a savoury broth of meat stock, tomatoes and chillies — is the kind of dish that explains why Anatolian cuisine has endured for centuries. The house baklava, generously filled with vivid crumbled pistachio and soaked in syrup calibrated to exactly the right sweetness, is among the finest in London. Pides, imam bayildi, homemade ayran and fermented turnip juice complete a menu that feels both rooted and alive.

Firin, 140 York Way, N1 0AX

Leydi, Farringdon — The New Fine-Dining Standard

The newest arrival on this list is also, in some ways, the most significant. Leydi, which opened in late 2024 inside Farringdon’s Hyde hotel near the Old Bailey, is chef Selin Kiazim’s most ambitious project to date — an all-day venue inspired by the food of Istanbul, with mezze and small plates alongside kebabs cooked on a charcoal mangal and served with dripping pide, grilled ezme and marinated peppers. Reports from diners describe it as among the year’s best meals. That is high praise in a city that eats as well as London does — and it is entirely deserved.

Leydi, 15 Old Bailey, EC4M

The Bigger Picture

What these four restaurants share — beyond quality — is a willingness to make an argument. An argument that Turkish cuisine is not merely a comfort food tradition but a sophisticated, regionally diverse, historically rich culinary inheritance that can support any level of ambition. That argument is being made, quietly and deliciously, in dining rooms across London in 2026. For the Turkish-British community that built this scene from the ground up, on Green Lanes and Stoke Newington and Dalston, there is something deeply satisfying about watching it arrive at this moment. The food was always this good. London is simply catching up.