Tabure — Restaurant in St Albans

So firstly I'm not sure how 'authentic' this Turkish restaurant is, but from the food being offered it was far from authentic from what I know of Turkish restaurants. Sure, it has a captive clientele and will no doubt appeal to those who aren't bothered whether the food on offer is Halal or not – but I can confirm that it is NOT! So in my somewhat naive view if you are an authentic Turkish restaurant then you by default would have to offer Halal food. I will say that the management has at least made the effort to come across as a traditional establishment, by hanging pictures of Turkish folk wearing 'traditional' Muslim clothes and even having a picture which has 'Allah' and Muhammed' (PBUH) written in Arabic – I guess this in their view makes them traditional enough but they just don't offer Halal food at their restaurant! Clearly as a Muslim my choices were reduced to fish or vegetarian; so, considering the food that I ordered and the quality of it, I would have to say it was no more than mediocre! I had the Halloumi as the starters, which was, well just Halloumi followed by the prawns as the main dish and seemed to have been sourced straight from Sainsbury's or Tesco! There could not have been more than 6 in plate, swimming around in a watery red sauce accompanied with some ill defined slimy vegetable and some pitta bread which was no more than a quarter of the normal pitta that you can buy from the supermarkets. It was completely bland! So, for me not only did they fail to deliver quality food, but they must be the only 'authentic Turkish' restaurant in the UK that does not offer Halal food; and that considering Luton with its massive Muslim population is probably 5 to 6 miles away where they can easily source Halal products. I guess it is far easier for this restaurant to offer non-halal food, make more profit as it is cheaper than using Halal products. And I get that Turkey is secular, but then don't hang pictures and the writings in your establishment that suggest otherwise! Will definitely...

Unfortunately, I can only rate the service which was very unprofessional because we were lied too on entrance that the restaurant was closed. If they didn’t want to let us in due to a dress code this would have been perfectly fine, however being told ‘ we’re closed ‘ at 9:30pm when it very evidently states on the door and online that they’re open till 11pm. Ended up going to Zaza down the road who were very polite since having given Tabure the benefit of the doubt at the fact they were closed, but once we finished we had seen Tabure was still very much open with customers eating at 10:30pm. This was enough evidence to know we had been lied too. Whether this was in regards to superficial reasons such as clothing (we were wearing gym clothes) or the fact we were people of colour entering an establishment which only had a certain demographic of individuals inside which we did not fit? Truthfully, we will never know because of the lack of professionalism displayed. Cannot speak for the whole team as we had only encountered one individual so do not want to discredit everyone. But I hope this person learns to treat others with respect and display more...

Pronounced 'Tab- bure- ray'. 'A' for effort with regards to the new extension/refurb. Really like the look of the interior! There's a good number of tables. The ambience was lovely. The staff were wonderful, attentive but not overbearing. The food was presented beautifully. Just be aware these are more tapas style dishes so I would recommend about 2/3 dishes pp. Taste wise, the hummus was nice but i couldn't taste or smell any truffle oil. The butternut squash was lovely as was the cod. The beef kofte was too intense for me... just too much mint/herbs/salt/spice. The meat itself was nicely done though. I also ordered the rice with vermicelli noodles...the noodles were so hard with the rice, they were abit hard to chew. Am sure I've had it before when it was Tahini and it was a lot better...maybe this was a one off. Would I be back? Yes, but not in a rush- I like this place more for the aesthetics than the...