10 April 2012

This review was first published in May 2000

Pasha is a Turkish restaurant which, in sporting parlance, has 'crossed the gain line'. There are still grilled meats but they are served on large, designer plates and the air is not heavy with smoke from an open charcoal grill. The meze list is comprehensive, but each dish is well-presented in an individual china bowl bedecked with the crescent and star (this is one Turkish restaurant where they have obviously had special china made). The dining-room is long and low, and the chairs are modern and comfortable, the d?cor is not aggressively Ottoman - if you were to take away the hanging lights it could be any other slick Islington eaterie. While the other Turkish interlopers in N1 (and there are quite a few establishments using this as a staging post between N4 and W1) are all cheerful, cheaper and more roughty-toughty, Pasha is something of a class act. Start with the mixed meze which brings an array of good things including astonishingly good hot bread. Hummus, taramasalata, cacik, kisir - which is a splendid, spicy bulgur wheat concoction - falafel, courgette fritters, meatballs, the list goes on and on, but you can always add a few even more exotic 'bonus' dishes. There's sucuk (which is a spicy Turkish sausage served in a rich tomato sauce), kayseri pastirmasi (described as Turkish bresaola with tomatoes, parsley and lemon cooked in foil), or 'Albanian liver' - all the Turkish restaurants seem to feature this dish which to the untrained Western eye doesn't seem very Albanian but rather to be chunks of grilled liver. At the Pasha they grill things with some flair, and the liver is cooked perfectly - neatly avoiding the 'overcook-until-shoe-leather' trap. When you come to the main courses, Pasha also breaks with tradition and there are five purely vegetarian main-course dishes (Islington is, after all, Islington). These include turlu, a traditional Turkish vegetable casserole, and bamya which is a casserole of okra and chickpeas that comes with pilaff rice. These are preceded by grilled meats and entrees, there's lamb or chicken, and the lamb dishes win about 12-4 with a few options combining the two. The grilled meats are exemplary here ? juicy, fresh, simple and subtle. Particularly worthy of praise is the beyti which is a fillet of lamb wrapped in a strip of fat so that it cooks properly. To eat it you simply discard the fatty outer layer and eat the splendid fillet which has self-basted on the grill. Pasha is a real restaurant and you will pay real restaurant prices, but you will also get the kind of service that may not always be top priority in the kind of Turkish grill houses that stay open until the small hours. Very Islington. Very agreeable.

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