We launched a Lunch Menu two weeks ago, running from Wednesdays through to Fridays from 12pm until 2:45pm. It’s at £25 per head and involves receiving a Sourdough Pide grilled fresh off our Ocakbașı with a choice of either smoked olive oil & kaymak butter on the side, or doused with ex-dairy mutton fat on top. Then arrives a small plate of Humus which we make by grilling our chickpeas AND our Fava Ezme with grilled peas. Two dips. All fire-kissed by charcoal. You then choose a main course, the option of either half a Poussin with chilli sauce, lemon pilav & sumac onions, or our Imam Bayıldı which is a baked aubergine dish with a mushroom ragu filling, confit potato, shoestring fries on top and with a comforting bedding of confit peppers below. Delicious!
All for £25.
An absolute steal. A masterstroke from us, leading to busy lunches, happy guests, and hope for the future and our longevity.
To further egg the pudding, I will outline 25 deals which are infinitely WORSE than our £25 lunch offering to allow you, the reader, further reason to pop on down and have an exuberant lunch. In the matter of fairness, each point will be near the £25 mark to allow a fair comparison as you weigh up your life choices. Here we fucking go:
1. You could book a return flight to Berlin for around £25 if you time it right. But why would you want to? Berlin sounds fun. Parties. Drugs. Hedonism. But it’s forced fun. It’s a lot of leather. You’ll be tired and probably will end up spending lots of money and time with weirdos in some apartment somewhere and miss your flight.
2. A rail journey for approximately 4 miles, by the current going rate. No thanks.
3. Could spend it at the cinema watching a Hollywood blockbuster franchise film with popcorn and a coke. Oh what, another Avengers film?! This time it’s about some weird goblin trying to blow up an imaginary planet?! Wow! Sounds shit, count me out mate.
4. A bottle of wine at a wine bar where the staff treat you with disdain and contempt because you don’t know the soil’s PH levels the wine’s producer harvested the grapes from. Sorry!
5. A sublet for someone’s room in Hackney as they go to Tesco for 3 hours and put up an Instagram story looking to cash in.
6. A Labubu. Or ‘Romelu Labubu’ if you’re looking for a Fantasy Premier League team name. Grow up, you’re 25-years old.
7. One of those Charlie Bingham cook-at-home luxury meals. I’m sure they’re fine but do you really not want someone standing with attentive care filling your tap water every 8 minutes and saying “Bye! Enjoy the rest of your day!” as you leave your meal instead? Plus, you don’t have to do the washing or tidying after. Plus, you’ve just left the house and feel human again.
8. A book you have no intention of reading but it looks good as you invite your Hinge date over as it sits on your shelf. Performative un-reading. Sad!
9. Sending £25 to an elderly relative for Christmas. Just don’t do it. They voted Brexit and will probably vote Reform next. They don’t care about the future – they only care about boats of people coming into these shores for the chance of a better life. Do one, Auntie Edith.
10. 4 pints of Guinness. You’ll be farting like mad the next day. Trust me.
11. A starter at a fine-dining restaurant. No starter should be around £25, in my honest opinion, unless it really is earth-shatteringly good, and large enough to share. Maybe a couple of grade-A langoustines cooked to perfection. But a fucking veggie dish with some fancy cheese in it? No. Just… no.
12. A pouch of tobacco. It is now like £27 to buy a pouch of tobacco! I go to Türkiye and I shit you not, I buy Marlboro Golds for £1.80 a pack. Just be Turkish and go to Türkiye often, like I do. It’s easy! Anyone can do it. Failing that, ask your Turkish off-license worker if they have any “Polish Marlboro”. It’s the bootlegged stuff they hide under the counter – way cheaper, but heavier in flavour. Alternatively, don’t smoke I guess?
13. 25 goes at the slot machines. Slot machines are so depressing, I have no idea how they still exist with the world of online gambling available. Seeing what is often a man put in coin after coin as they sink their pints at a grubby pub – there are fewer more depressing sights in London.
14. Cheap headphones – may as well play your music out loud on the bus because everyone can hear what you’re listening to. And it’s not good. It’s not soothing. And the traffic is at a standstill, and I want to go full-apeshit with rage but here we are, writing a newsletter instead. Coward.
15. For £35.50, an extra tenner, you could join The Labour Party! Love indecisive, spinless Prime Ministers and cabinets who do not give a single iota of a fuck about hospitality? Who pander to the far-right to gain votes? Who expel any party members that criticises the Israeli state over its genocide? Well boy have I got a deal for you!
16. This is hard. I’m running out of steam. Ok, here we go: A plant you will neglect and KILL.
17. A tennis racket you will only ever use 4 times in your life. And each time you play, you lose. Speaking from experience.
18. Any make up product. You’re so beautiful babez, you don’t need it. Yes, you.
19. A lunch menu elsewhere offering something similar at a similar price unless it’s a restaurant we love and trust and hold dear. In which case, go go go!
20. Getting to 20 was hard, but we move. I spent £25 on a flea tablet for my puppy Yossarian and I’m fairly sure he doesn’t have fleas or tapeworms, but I yielded anyway as I’m a first-time dog-owner and will accept anything any vet will say without fact-checking first.
21. You could spend £25 on a candle which dies out on you in 2 weeks as you use it at every opportune moment in your home, forgetting what fresh oxygen (OPEN YOUR WINDOWS WHILST YOU’RE OUTSIDE) feels and smells like.
22. A really bad haircut. Don’t be afraid to stop the barber midway if you feel things turning south. Hurt their feelings before hurting your own eyes whenever you look back in the mirror.
23. Truffles. I hate them. They ruin and mask every flavour, and do not compliment most dishes. Do not order an add-on of truffles for £25 on your pasta, it’s stupid and indulgent and double stupid.
24. You could pay £25 to go to your loser-acquaintance from uni’s theatre show somewhere in central and come out of it embarrassed and annoyed you were roped in. Don’t do it. Unfollow. Unfriend. Move on.
25. You could buy someone a Mangal II gift voucher for £25 but what is that really going to contribute towards their meal? Go £50 or £100. Give them the full whack. Go hard or go home.
So, there we are. 25 shit things you could do for £25 instead of coming here for lunch in the week and having a great experience. The choice is yours – live your truth.