Fancy food, in a very fancy part of town, satisfies Nick’s meat cravings, even if he’s not too fond of the muzak
Chargal, the Turkish-Mediterranean offshoot of The Mantl, is where Jura used to be. Oddly enough it still lives on like a zombie in Wi Fi, my ‘phone automatically logged onto Jura wi-fi when we went in. ‘It won’t connect to the internet, though,’ the friendly restaurant manager told me, ‘we can’t find the router, and we’ve looked everywhere, but it’s not online’. He gave me Chargal’s logon instead.
Chargal, the name is a mashup of Charcoal and Mangal, has only been open a few months. Its location is perfect for attracting the moneyed diner. Outside Berkeley Street is packed with supercars. I counted five Ferraris, two Lambos and a clutch of Bentleys on my walk from Green Park station.
The entrance is part bar and part casual dining, it’s the spot where Juras’s bread oven used to be. This is where you can eat small mezze and look out on the street. Next is a cosy dining area, and behind that an open kitchen where you can eat while seeing the charcoal grill in action. Upstairs is a much brighter, more modern dining room, as well as a large private room.
We headed to the cosy area and a beautifully dressed table right next to the glass walled wine ‘cellar. Inside that was a roll call of the very best champagnes and brandies, plus of course a lot of fine wine. It’s all very Mayfair, as perhaps was the ‘tick tick tick’ ambient hotel music, which got on my nerves rather as we were sitting right under one of the loudspeakers.
The menu, nicely encased in embossed leather, (best not bring your vegan friends), has everything you would expect and a few extra things you wouldn’t. For example mantı – lamb dumplings, smoked yoghurt, aleppo chili oil – is a classic Turkish home cooked dish but not often seen in restaurants.
A simple dough, almost identical to pasta dough, encases minced lamb. Unlike, say, ravioli, once made these are part-baked before boiling, which makes them slightly chewy in a good way. Drenched in that smoked yoghurt and spiced with the oil, they’re irresistible as a starter.
We ate those with a mixed mezze platter – cacık, muhammara, hummus – with crudités and some freshly chargrilled flatbreads topped with Wild za’atar. A bit too freshly grilled I thought as there was red hot oil still on them which burned my fingers. Each of the mezze was prettily presented to offset its humble origin and each was a good example.
Hummus with a good dusting of sesame seeds and whipped to a cream spread happily on the lethal flatbread, muhammara the addictive blend of walnuts, roasted red peppers, pomegranate molasses and breadcrumbs was sweet and then surprisingly good, a simple cacik.
The secret of not making a bad cacik is to use super fresh cucumber that’s had much of its moisture removed, and top quality yoghurt. These mezzes all went very well with crisp carrots and radicchio leaves, but we soon ran out of the hot flatbread. I ordered some more and was gently admonished by our waiter ‘not to fill up on bread!’, a fair point but we did it anyway.
There are a lot of interesting main dishes on the menu, which is why it’s always best to go mob-handed to these kinds of restaurants because that way you get a table heaving with dishes. As it was just us, and we wanted grilled meats, we went for the meat sharing platter.
This obviously has pretty much zero Instagramness, but if you like charcoal grilled meat that shouldn’t bother you. This sizzling plateful (he was right about avoiding eating too much bread earlier) had madana, kuzu şiş , tavuk şiş and kaburga which, Google told me, translates as minced lamb kebab, lamb shish kebab, chicken shish kebab and grilled lamb ribs, all on top of bread to soak up the lovely juices.
Whilst everything was cooked very well, the lamb kebab nicely pink, I felt it could all have done with more charcoal charring, which is where the real flavour is, and a little less salt in the minced kebab. I wasn’t too keen on the lamb ribs, I know fat is flavour but…. Chicken was tasty and moist, not easy with chicken which can all too easily overcook on a grill.
A mixed salad was perfect with it – crispy, sumac-y, sharp, sour and fresh as can be. In some ways it was my favourite dish of all and it cut the meat perfectly.
We shared an excellent Burnt Basque Cheesecake that had a frozen clementine grated over it at the table. Ideal for Insta, but I later discovered I hadn’t pressed the Record button on my phone, so my influencer career is over before it started. A shame as I was working on my sexy pout to camera.
You don’t have to be glam to eat at Chargal, but judging from the night we went it certainly helps. This is Turkish for people not too keen on eating in the rougher parts of town, classic dishes upgraded and fancyfied for a crowd who don’t mind spending over the odds.
11 Berkeley Street
Mayfair, London
W1J 8DS