Leydi

Fire held in the foreground

The breads arrive warm from the stone oven before Selin Kiazim, chef at Leydi in London, lets the mangal do its slower work. At this all-day Turkish restaurant inside Hyde London City, her station is not framed as a return to old forms for their own sake. It is a working translation of Istanbul appetite into a London room, with meze, breads, smoke, yogurt, pepper, walnut, lamb, chicken and fish carrying the argument across the pass.

Kiazim’s discipline was formed in London kitchens. Westminster Kingsway College gave her the base; from 2007, Peter Gordon at The Providores and Tapa Room in Marylebone gave her the pressure of speed, consistency and exact flavour. At Kopapa, she moved into the head chef role. Oklava, where she has been owner and chef-director since 2015, gave that voice its longer frame. Leydi asks something different again: the range of a lokanta, the pace of an all-day house, and the clarity to keep fire-led cooking from becoming blunt.

A Turkish program built around bread, meze and mangal

The method at Leydi starts before the grill. House-made börek goes into a stone oven, the filo held crisp around fillings such as sheep’s milk feta and leeks, with truffle honey used where sweetness needs to meet salt and fat. The Turkish bread basket brings pide, somun and lavash with sesame salted butter. That bread is not background. It is the tool for the table, the first measure of texture, heat and appetite.

The meze gives the kitchen its range: muhammara with sun-dried red pepper and walnut, smoked aubergine, cacik, hummus, Atom with garlic yogurt and Urfa chilli oil, and baked claypot hummus with pastirma brown butter. Then the mangal takes over. Chicken shish, lamb adana and lamb chops come with grilled ezme, marinated peppers, onion salad and pide, so the plate moves between char, acid, onion, soft bread and the warmth of spice. The islak burger follows the same appetite in another register, a spiced beef and lamb köfte bun soaked with garlic tomato sauce. Desserts keep the texture work visible: kunefe with pistachio and kaymak, kurabiye, seasonal fruit, and a Pistachio Katmer’s Ice Cream Sandwich.

The room keeps pace with the pass

The room sits within the Grade II-listed Spiers & Pond building, part of Hyde London City, but Leydi works to feel like its own house rather than a hotel appendage. The open kitchen matters here. It lets the pass remain audible and visible, so the rhythm of the meal comes from the bench and the fire as much as from the floor.

Pale pink walls, tiled floors, gallery hang and low light give the restaurant a softer register than the grill might suggest. The counter energy changes through the day, from Turkish breakfasts and tea to late plates built around smoke and bread. Downstairs, Black Lacquer Vinyl Bar gives the building another mood, but Leydi’s centre stays upstairs, where the stone oven and mangal set the tempo. The room can carry brunch, meze spread and supper without losing the thread.

Where the hand stays visible

Leydi holds Kiazim’s cooking in a broader format than Oklava without loosening the line of taste. Turkish-Cypriot memory, Anatolian ingredients and Istanbul neighbourhood eating appear here as working materials, not decoration. The proof is in the sequence of the table: bread first, dips close behind, fire when the appetite is ready for it.

If the house has a next move, it is already inside the program: keeping an all-day restaurant precise when breakfast, börek, mangal and late plates all ask for different hands. Kiazim’s name remains tied to that discipline at Leydi, where the börek remains.