Mangal 2

Charcoal held to a new line

Cull Yaw köfte comes off the grill under Sertaç Dirik, chef at Mangal 2 in Dalston, London, with smoke carrying the old ocakbaşı grammar into a sharper present. Sertaç Dirik runs the kitchen as part of the Dirik family house on Stoke Newington Road, where Ali Dirik established Mangal 2 in 1994 after opening Mangal 1 in 1991. The lineage matters here because the room did not begin as a fashion for fire. It began as a Turkish grill house built around the mangal, the Anatolian open charcoal fire used for cooking, eating, drinking, and talk.

In 2021, Sertaç and his brother Ferhat took over the restaurant and changed its pitch without cutting the root. Ferhat stewards the room; Sertaç holds the pass. His time in Copenhagen kitchens, at 108 and Amass, gave him a practical discipline that shows in the way the plates are held back from noise. Observer Food Monthly named him Young Chef of the Year in 2022, and bench-side dishes include grilled mackerel with peaches, börek filled with beyaz peynir and fermented wild garlic, and köfte that still answers to the charcoal rather than to novelty.

The ocakbaşı after Copenhagen

The method at Mangal 2 is not a clean break from the grill house; it is a tightening of its tolerances. The menu stays à la carte and shareable, with small plates moving between sourdough pide, mushroom manti, doner kebab, lamb chops, and Cull Yaw cuts. The kitchen uses the fire as its constant, then lets sourcing and acidity change the register. Cull Yaw mutton from Matt Chatfield at The Cornwall Project gives the köfte depth without requiring a heavy hand. Mushroom manti brings roasted chanterelles and black trompettes into a spiced broth, a dumpling dish with Turkish memory and a colder-climate edge.

That Copenhagen training is most visible in restraint. Fruit appears for lift, as in mackerel with peaches, not as decoration. Fermented wild garlic sharpens beyaz peynir inside börek without pulling the dish away from its form. Even the doner kebab is treated as a craft problem: fat, char, tenderness, and timing, not nostalgia alone. The wine program follows the same turn, leaning toward natural bottles and local beers that can stand beside smoke, pomegranate, offal, brown crab butter, and the salted pull of lamb.

Bright blue walls, hard heat

The room is pared back and comfortable, bright blue after the 2021 refresh, with the open grill keeping the old energy in view. It is lively rather than hushed. Rock music has been part of the kitchen’s rhythm, though on a full service the sound of the room can take over: cutlery, orders, plates landing, the grill working steadily behind the pass. Mangal 2 still feels like a place built around shared food, but the portions, pacing, and ingredients now ask for closer attention.

There is a useful tension in the room. Some of the old regulars came for a different kind of abundance; newer diners come to see how far an ocakbaşı can stretch. Sertaç does not settle that tension with explanation. He keeps returning to the handwork of the grill, to dumplings, pide, mackerel, börek, and Cull Yaw köfte.