Café Istanbul Lancaster — Restaurant in Lancaster

Café Istanbul is located in Lancaster town centre and as one would have guessed, serves Turkish cuisine. It is a simple, comfortable, non-flashy, casual dining restaurant & seeing Lahmacun (Turkish lavash with mince,like a thin crust pizza) on their menu was a good enough reason to give it a try.

The ambience was comfortable with music, portraits and lamps giving it a good central Eurasian vibe. The Turkish coffee is an expresso shot served in dainty porcelain set. Small, but packs a punch, a Caffeine high is guaranteed. The Lahmacun was flavourful and the mix shish, a combination of lamb shish, chicken shish & lamb doner was great as a meal. The lamb & chicken shish felt a tad under seasoned but the lamb doner compensated for it.

All meals were served with a generous serving of vegetables & greens, which did our gut some good. We were happy with the meal and would certainly recommend the lahmacun. We did have a small scare because they accepted only cash payment. (Did not notice the board) We are hoping it was a temporary glitch due to the card machine not...

Asked for a wrap, specified I wanted it on a thick wrap, if the wrap was thin I would prefer a kebab wrap (Like they do in Turkey...) She told me they had 2 options for the wrap and that I could have it on the thick bread. I was then told its cash only, had to walk to cash point (only 1 reason a place is cash only nowadays) When I got back I saw a gentleman making a supermarket thin style wrap, I asked her if this is my wrap, she said yes. I said you told me it was thick, she said 'no I said bigger' and then he said 'its home made'. They'll tell you anything to get a sale, I was very clear what I wanted.

Response: Some advice for you Istanbul - next time a customer is asking specifics, show them!! You could have EASILY shown me the wrap as I was asking about it, but you never did. That's your bad, not mine, honest feedback about what happened in your...

Went there for lunch with my daughters. The food was very good and portion sizes decent. However the overall service left question marks.

We ordered three items, two arrived but the third -a Pide did not. On enquiring from the waitress, she realised she had forgotten to enter it on the computer. It was surprising she did not note the order down as she took it. In all fairness, she did apologise, but it was a shame that one of us had to wait 15 minutes more whilst the other two finished their meal.

It was even more surprising that the restaurant did not accept card payments. It is a fairly large establishment and especially during the current situation where cash handling is not very popular they think it is acceptable to operate on a cash only basis. So, one of us had to walk to the bank in heavy rain to get the cash to...