Kebapci Iskender opens its first restaurant outside Turkey
The Bursa institution that has served the original Iskender kebab since 1867 has crossed into Knightsbridge, with one dish, 50 covers and a bust of its founder at the door.
Kebapci Iskender, the Bursa restaurant that has served the original Iskender kebab since 1867, has opened its first restaurant outside Turkey, in London's Knightsbridge.
The restaurant has taken a townhouse at 30 Beauchamp Place, a few steps from Harrods, bought outright by the Iskenderoglu family rather than leased. It is the latest overseas name to stake a small claim in the capital, following Gobind Chona's second Oorja in Marylebone. Oguzhan and Kayhan Iskender, sons of family head Yavuz Iskenderoglu, will split their time between London and Turkey to run it.
Kebapci Iskender was founded in 1867 by Iskender Efendi, credited by the family as the inventor of the doner kebab in its modern form; a bronze bust of him greets guests at the door — the kind of grill-side ritual visitors will recognise from Istanbul's own doner stalls, 150 miles up the coast from Bursa. The business has stayed under family ownership ever since, and the London opening is its first and, the family says, probably its only launch outside Turkey.
A single dish, a single city for 159 years, now a single outpost behind Harrods.
One dish, 400 covers a day
The menu runs to a single main: doner made from lamb and a little veal, cooked on a vertical charcoal grill, sliced onto chopped flatbread with tomato, grilled green peppers, Turkish yoghurt, tomato sauce and foaming butter poured at the table. A single portion costs £29, a portion and a half £39, and a child's portion £19. Dessert runs to kemalpasa, a cheese-and-semolina sweet, and candied chestnuts.
The restaurant seats around 50 and tends to close by 7pm, once the meat runs out — the Bursa original serves up to 400 covers a day. London's version keeps the same semi-open kitchen, with Turkish chefs slicing the doner in view of the room, though the family has described this launch as deliberately quiet rather than the start of an expansion.
A family protecting its heritage in London
An alcohol licence has been secured for the Knightsbridge site, unusual for a brand whose restaurants in Turkey do not serve it; it is not yet clear whether it will be used. For a chain that has spent 159 years on one dish in one city, the calculation behind a single London outpost is less about growth than control — of the recipe, the grill and, now, the queue by Harrods.
