Authentic Anatolian & Ottoman Turkish Cooking in Central London

Calling yourself the best Turkish restaurant in London is a category trap — there are too many regional traditions inside Turkish cuisine for any single kitchen to claim all of them at once. What we will say is that Grand Bazaar has been on James Street in central London since 2005, the kitchen is rooted in Anatolian and Ottoman cooking, and the menu is built from the dishes that travelled out of Istanbul, Gaziantep, Adana and the Aegean coast into the wider Turkish canon. That heritage is the standard the kitchen cooks to.

Anatolian cooking is, at its core, a kitchen of slow time, charcoal, olive oil, citrus, herbs, yogurt and grains. Our cold mezze list — humus, haydari, kisir, ezme, dolma, baba ganoush, patlican söğürme — sits squarely inside that tradition, and the way it's eaten — small plates brought together rather than as a course — comes with it. The hot mezze adds sigara börek, grilled halloumi, falafel and grilled octopus. The bread is warm from the oven and brought to order rather than placed before you sit down.

Ottoman cooking is the more elaborate side of the lineage, and the menu carries it through the slow-cooked dishes: manti, the small lamb dumplings folded by hand and served with garlic yogurt and chili butter; iskender, layered over toasted pide bread with strained yogurt and warm tomato butter; lamb shank cooked until it falls; and kazandibi — caramelised milk pudding — on the dessert board with baklava, künefe and a small glass of Turkish coffee. These are the dishes that take time on the back burners rather than minutes on the grill.

Reputation in central London takes years to build and is best read in the room itself. We seat 42 inside and 75 outside on the pedestrianised section of St Christopher's Place, and on a Saturday evening the room runs at full pace from 18:00 to closing. We don't quote awards or league-table rankings on this page — we'd rather not pin our reputation to a single review cycle — and instead encourage you to read the kitchen's current Google and TripAdvisor reviews honestly and to come and form your own view.

Practical things, for what they're worth. The kitchen is fully halal on the meat side. We're open every day until 22:30, including Sundays and bank holidays. The breakfast menu — a full serpme kahvalti — runs until 4pm. The room is family-friendly, the bar is properly stocked with Turkish wines, raki and beer, and the dining room handles tables of two through to fifteen comfortably. To plan a visit, view the menus or reserve a table online; for groups of seven or more, please call the restaurant directly so we can hold the right table.