Fay Maschler reviews Yosma: An evolved slice of Turkish delight

Attention to detail wins over Fay Maschler at Yosma
A cavernous space: the 150-seater Yosma in Baker Street has a quiet and composed kitchen
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures
Fay Maschler24 November 2017

I get soft openings, I do. Sort of. For a short period prices in a new restaurant are ameliorated while kitchen and front-of-house aim to co-ordinate and streamline their acts and bargain hunters fill the seats. Then, on a day that has usually been picked well in advance, ready or not, full prices are charged.

Those punters who pay let’s say half-price for food, will they go back? Might they think that what they handed over was actually about right for what they received and leave it at that? The thought has certainly occurred to me in various new establishments dipping their toes in the water.

Soft openings, sometimes cosily described as “friends and family” meals, used to be covert affairs with a genuine practical purpose — but social media has put paid to that. It is now a commonplace rite of passage for restaurants that are launching, and photographs and comment bounce around long before official opening dates. On the part of followers the compulsion to be first in is under-pinned by the notion of a deal, a bit of a steal.

A traditionally quiet month such as this past August has been bulging with soft openings, a phrase that one of my chums remarks seems rather rude. News about Yosma tantalises me as there is a definite vivid flickering in the coals of sophisticated Turkish cooking in London, and what the estimable Selin Kiazim instigated at Oklava in Shoreditch looks here to be magnified — and not only by big money.

Sophisticated Turkish cooking: Yosma gets things right in the details
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures

Backers of Yosma in Baker Street — on the site that was previously the arguably over-virtuous Indali Lounge — are Levent Buyukugur and Sanjay Nandi of the company Good Food Society, who two years ago facilitated Ristorante Frescobaldi in Mayfair. Head chef is Hus Vedat, born of Turkish Cypriot parents, whose CV includes a baptism of live fire at Jamie Oliver’s Barbecoa.

Zeren Wilson, who faithful readers will know is sometimes for me a gastronomic canary down the mine, and always a good friend and source of wine expertise, is half Turkish Cypriot. On my first visit to Yosma he bags three of us bar stools overlooking the open kitchen.

There is none of the crash, bang, wallop of the mangals of Green Lanes. The kitchen is quiet and composed. Gas flames lick the walls of the clay oven. There are no flatbreads stacked like giants’ edible poker chips. A chef, not Vedat, carefully places half a tomato on the grill and a few minutes later removes it with tongs.

We move to a table, the better to converse in the cavernous 150-seater space, where rough white-glazed bricks on the walls and the terrazzo floor serve the noise and return the music as fast as Juan Martin del Potro.

'Charred lamb breast with courgettes and hazelnuts stood out for its transformation of a humble ingredient into something approaching masterful'

Meze cold and hot precede and surround dishes from the grill and the oven and the arrival of the chosen items quite slowly and in no particular order fits fine with the ethos of the operation. But at lunch on another day everything ordered cold and hot, small and more substantial, being delivered at once isn’t ideal in the pursuit of enjoyment. A lot of shuffling is involved.

Lamb is the hero meat obviously but fish and shellfish are an important presence. Cornish day boat-caught fish barbecued whole proves unavailable but petals of marinated sea bass tricked out with grapefruit, fennel, green chilli, basil and lime juice is stealthily delicate, while chickpea flour used to coat deep-fried calamari provides a cracking crunch and the squid ink a dramatic pool of sauce. Crisply fried baby red mullet (two) lack the robust flavour of their presumed bigger mommas and poppas.

Indicative of deeper digging into the annals of the cuisine are manti, tiny purse-shaped dumplings filled with minced lamb and floated in a yogurt sauce sprinkled with mint and scribbled on with chilli oil. The use of lamb neck, maybe even scrag end, imparts a flavour louder than bleating. Ordering another plateful is a temptation.

The hero meat: lamb features heavily on the menu
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures

Sweetbreads fried with onion, sumac and parsley are luscious. Sucuk — spicy beef sausages served with potatoes and pickled shallots — has Zeren speaking wistfully of growing up with his Turkish-Cypriot mum when the dish, with the addition of a fried egg, was often served for breakfast.

Of the mangal lamb dishes tried, charred breast served with courgettes, hazelnuts, lemon yoghurt and chilli ezme (hand-chopped salad) stood out for its transformation of a humble ingredient into something approaching masterful.

The best is kept ’til last. The dessert of künefe, made from kadayif pastry — often compared with shredded wheat — filled with melting cheese, doused in lemon syrup and with a furrow of chopped pistachios on top is sensational. My sister Beth, who doesn’t eat desserts, eats it.

Latest restaurant reviews

1/128

The difference at Yosma is in the detail. Presentation, garnishing, the use of herbs, refinement of purées such as fava and hummus, spicing beyond Aleppo pepper, a raki bar and a relatively interesting selection of Turkish wines of all hues is, you might say, the difference between N4 and W1.

Now that the soft opening has hardened there will be a wider gap between the bills of those postcodes although food, if not drinks, prices at Yosma are reasonable even at full strength. Things that it would be nice to find developed: rhythm of service, provision of flatbreads hot from the oven, choice of music.

50 Baker Street, W1 (020 3019 6282, yosma.london). Open daily noon-3pm and 6pm-11pm. A meal for two with wine, about £95 including 12.5 per cent service.

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in