Mangal 2 Restaurant — Restaurant in London

I visited here with my partner recently for an evening meal before a night out at the boxing nearby.

I had high hopes after reading a glowing review of this place from a famous food critic who is pretty hard to please. Also because on paper at least, the menu was right up my street, featuring dishes centred around both octopus AND sweetbreads, two of my all-time faves.

The venue itself is okay; small, noisy and (on the day we visited at least) hot. The menu and wine list were presented without explanation and I was offered a pint of beer whilst my partner had a coke. My beer took an age to arrive and when it did it wasn’t particularly fresh or nice (£6.75 for a pint of pale ale!!!?)

Anyway, we’d come for the food. As the larger dishes were knocking on twenty quid each we decided we’d have one each and that with two sides and some bread to start that would be ample. That turned out to be a mistake. The bread, when it arrived was the size of a tea coaster. It was delicious, as was the tangy butter that accompanied it, but for nearly four quid I think it was reasonable to have expected more.

The stingy bread portions set the tone for the rest of the meal. Our mains arrived and my partner’s order of lamb shoulder turned out to be just that: a medium sized plate of meat. Nothing else. Just meat. We were presented with a small saucer of yoghurt and tomato sauce as a sole accompaniment. And my dish; lamb sweetbreads with tomatoes and onions, it was, well, ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS! I can honestly say that I’ve never had such delicious sweetbreads in a restaurant ever, and I’ve eaten at some of the so-called best restaurants in the world. If I was being really picky about my dish, I would say that the sweetbreads would have benefited from being a bit more caramelised, but that’s a very minor issue in what was otherwise a TOP dish.

I’m afraid there’s nothing else positive we could say about the meal. The side portions were absolutely ridiculous - a tiny plate of rice which, according to the menu contained some oyster mushrooms, but you would have needed a magnifying glass to see them. Also, another dolls’ house portion, this time of cabbage with toasted barley. Good flavour and interesting contrast of textures but at the end of the day, it’s cabbage and it wouldn’t bankrupt the restaurant to provide a decent sized portion.

The less said about the wine, the better. My partner ordered a glass of sparkling and what turned up was like a sour fruit beer. Now I’m quite partial to a sour beer so I necked it in the end but my partner was disappointed because, well because she ordered a glass of sparkling wine so it’s reasonable to expect just that. The waiter needs to tell customers when they order that what they’ll be getting when they order a glass of sparkling wine is like no other sparkling wine you’ve ever had before and tastes sour. We did query this with the waiter and we were told ‘they’re supposed to be like that’. Maybe, but make it clearer what people are ordering!

So there you go, you can make you’re own mind up whether you’re going to like this place. The two of us spent just over sixty quid on our meal including drinks (pint of beer and a small glass of sour wine) and, to be honest two hours later I found myself ordering a kebab in my favourite local kebab house because I was still hungry. I think there’s some really interesting flavours coming out the kitchen at Mangal 2 but they have to give it more substance if they’re going to keep...

I wanted to like this, but it was impossible. Monday evening dinner for 3 ppl. Can't remember the last time I was so outraged after leaving the restaurant. Underwhelming food for prices which are too high, and mid service.

First the service. Reserved upstairs, called ahead well be 15 min late and they said they will amend the reservation. Once we arrived they were like, no youre in the basement (there was plenty of space upstairs for 3 ppl and they still insisted). Staff is friendly but not that knowledgeable. After not having the wine we requested, they suggested an alternative with the reasoning "it's the cheapest house wine" (not hung up about the price, but it was smth completely different). Also no cooler for white wine. All food took way too long to bring (not a fan of restaurants that try to shuffle you out the door but this was seriously slow)

Food dish by dish, but in general everything was at the same time burned and undercooked. The ingredients weren't top either. Once you account for the size and price it's just ridiculous.

Pide with kaymak: burnt on the bottom (not lightly charred as it should be, literally burnt) and too chewy as a result

Cull yew kofte with apple sauce: nice but it's the smallest kofte I've seen in my life. While the sauce saved it, kofte itself was extremely tasteless

Smoked hummus with pickles and crackers: alright I guess? However two crackers for tiny bit of hummus defeats the whole purpose of the dip. Pickles were underwhelming as well in variety and taste. There was also a hair in the plate but it was still too early in the night for us to kick up a fuss. If it happened towards the end definitely would

Courgette (kinda fried patty type): this was good compared to the rest but still kind of bland. The sauce saved it to an extent but doesn't justify its price tag on the menu

Lamb ribs with cranberries: outrageously bad. This is where we decided were not coming back. Absolutely burned on the outside (again, burned, not charred) while completely undercooked on the inside. Genuinely shocking

Mushroom manti:pretty good, not gonna lie. I can see a version of this meal where I somehow had a slightly less burned Pide, the courgette, and then this and said not fantastic but pretty good.

Prime rib: supermarket quality rib. Not well cooked. Relatively bland garnished. 65 pounds lmao

Anyway, I see what this restaurant is trying to do but it fails at doing it. It ends up being neither an interesting take on Turkish cuisine, nor your average med/euro inspired small plate restaurant. I wouldn't rant so much if the prices weren't obnoxious at the same time. The best part of the meal was going across the street for kunefe. Very nice people, and probably would have a better, if not as posh, dinner there

One word...

Following a nice evening out with friends, we all decided to go to Mangal 2 for a late night dinner as we thought we would end it in a nice way. Since its opening, the restaurant has acquired quite a fine reputation within the neighbourhood, urging us to have a taste of their celebrated barbecued meat. In London, most Turkish restaurants would offer you some salad and a sample of mezzes or house dips upon arrival, alongside with fresh warm bread. However, do not expect such treatment at Mangal 2. After taking our order, the waiters kindly brought us glasses of water and waited near the grill, until one of my friend enquired about any complementary bread and dips. The waiter nodded and replied “yes of course,” only to present us with a saucer of what can only be described as an approximate fragment of a teaspoon each of 3 mezzes, to the 5 of us, while proudly adding “this is on the house!” We appreciated the gesture, however it is fortunate this was complementary as I am perplexed at how much this could have been priced on any menu, given the microscopic portion of each dip. When the mains arrived, I was also bewildered to have a chicken drumstick on my plate while I had ordered marinated chicken thighs. Moreover, the waiter brought along with the plates of kebabs, a tea plate of rice and bulgur for 5 of us to share. We all looked at each other confused, and we had to confirm with him this was indeed the regular portion of rice and bulgur for 5 people. At this point, any regular customers of any Turkish restaurants in London would have been horrified by his confirmation and would have only been confronted with the sole option of being seized with a panic attack. 2 of us had ordered Beyti Sarma and while it’s merely an Adana kebab wrapped in Lavash bread, topped with yogurt and tomato sauce, they also managed to turn it into a disaster and presented us with another chaotic dish. Countless layers of cold and chewy Lavash bread were desperately trying to hold on to the Adana kebab while drowning in an ocean of yogurt and tomato sauce. Clearly ratio is not the chef’s forte, but portion control is. As Turkish food enthusiasts that have eaten in a fair amount of Turkish restaurants in London and in Turkey, we don’t recommend Mangal 2, unless you want to undergo an underwhelming and poor dining experience. The restaurant is living off an overrated good reputation, which unfortunately does not match with the insignificance that is presented on each plate. For more or less the same price, you can have a nicer meal and a friendlier service at other restaurants such as Hala or Gökyüzü on Green Lanes. While the portions were not enough to satisfy our appetite, we nonetheless came out of Mangal 2 full...of...