Burak Demirelli has form. The restaurateur behind Faros – the Mediterranean-Italian restaurant that has become one of central London’s most reliably loved spots, with two packed-out sites in Holborn and Oxford Circus — and Fred Bakery, the viennoiserie destination that Londoners were making pilgrimages to before it even had a second location, knows how to build a room people want to be in.
Lokal is his fifth venue and his first Turkish restaurant: a contemporary dining concept that opened in May on Market Place in Fitzrovia, led by head chefs Salih Serden and Akacan Agir, and built around the idea that Turkish cooking in London deserves to be taken seriously on its own terms – not filtered through a kebab-house lens, but explored for the regionally diverse, historically rich culinary tradition it actually is. It’s an ambitious brief, and the question is whether Lokal lives up to it.
The vibe
The space is polished and considered, built from warm tactile materials and contemporary finishes – 110 covers indoors, counter dining, a dedicated cocktail bar and a semi-private dining room that together make for a rather refined holiday-y setup that transports you to somewhere that’s not just off Oxford Street. The room does a convincing job of making you feel like you’ve arrived somewhere worth arriving at, even if the rest of the experience takes a little longer to find its footing.
The space is polished and considered – tan leather banquettes, terrazzo floors, pale wood tables, squat tulips in glass vases, framed prints covering every wall. It conjures something Ottoman and unhurried, like stumbling into a Beyoğlu dining room that’s been unconspiculously getting on with it for sixty years. It transports you somewhere that is emphatically not just off Oxford Street, which is ideal, truly.
What’s on the menu?
Starters and spreads
We started with the spreads as one does when they visit a Turkish restaurant. The hummus, served with crispy chickpeas, was earthier and more roasted than expected – less the sharp, lemony lift you might anticipate, and more mellow and grounded.
The atom – roasted peppers, wild garlic and yoghurt – was the more arresting of the two: warmly spiced with real restraint, some heat but not too much that it muscled everything else out, with a wild garlic dressing pooled around the outside of the dip that brought a real kick of freshness and herbiness to every bread swipe.
Both arrived with bread that, from the team behind one of London’s most talked-about bakeries, was a surprising miss – stale and without the pillowy, yielding give you want when you’re joyfully mopping up a good spread.
Mezze
The mezze were more assured, with the fried mushrooms being the mainstay – earthy and meaty, and best when left to drink up the sauce beneath them. The artichokes and celeriac were pleasant enough on paper, but more muted and oil-slicked than expected, their flavours toned down rather than forward, which felt strangely at odds with a kitchen otherwise making a case for the boldness and diversity of Turkish regional cooking.
For mains, the grilled sea bass was an absolute standout, a beautifully soft fillet with crackling skin, served alongside a fresh, herby salad that cut through the buttery flesh. Eating it, you could almost convince yourself you were somewhere on the Aegean coast, salt in the air, sun going down.
Desserts
Desserts were the most convincing argument for coming back. The fig dream- a cultured fig pudding, dense, claggy and mercifully not oversweet – arrived topped with a glossy pile of cultured figs that brought texture and dimension to every spoonful.
Then the kadayıf: shredded filo pastry with walnut, delivering all the deep, honeyed pleasure of baklava without the sugar overload that usually follows – which, if you know baklava, you’ll understand is no small achievement.
Alongside the food there are also a selection of signature cocktails all around the £16 mark. Our favourite was the Mesopotamia – tequila infused with padrón peppers, rosé wine, Campari and rosehip cordial – a punchy, confident drink that pairs surprisingly well with the starters and mezze.
Verdict
Demirelli’s other restaurants have built their reputations as much on how they make people feel as on what they put on the plate, and there is still ground to cover on that front at Lokal – a restaurant that presents itself as homely but whose service felt cooler than the room promised.
The kitchen is doing more right than wrong, and that counts for a great deal. We wouldn’t go out of our way to return just yet – but then again, this is a restaurant that suits the spontaneous detour off Oxford Street, and its location makes that an easy sell. A warm, unhurried pocket of Istanbul in one of the loudest, most exhausting streets in London.
Key details
Address: 7, 8 Market Pl, London W1W 8AG
Website: lokalrestaurant.co.uk
Socials: @lokallondon
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