At Leydi, the ground-floor restaurant of Hyde London City, chef Selin Kiazim and head chef Halit Deniz cook the food of Istanbul’s lokantas over open flame. We sat down to the Leydi Deluxe, a sharing feast for the whole tabl

Turkish food rewards appetite. A good meal arrives in waves: bread first, then a spread of meze to tear and scoop, then something off the grill, with rice, salad and more bread to mop up whatever is left. It’s food built for the table rather than the individual plate, and that generosity is what Leydi does best.

The restaurant sits on the ground floor of Hyde London City, the LA-born hotel brand’s outpost in the Spiers & Pond building on Old Bailey. The Grade II-listed building was once the first hotel in London to have electric lighting. Hyde has kept the Victorian bones and layered over them with botanical wallpaper and warm colour, so the dining room feels lived-in rather than corporate. That’s no small thing in a postcode better known for courtrooms and expense accounts.

The kitchen is overseen by Selin Kiazim, whose London cooking has long drawn on her Turkish Cypriot heritage, working with head chef Halit Deniz. The menu is built around the mangal, the charcoal grill, with fire doing much of the work.

We ordered the Leydi Deluxe, the restaurant’s set menu at £55 a head, shared across the table. It covers the greatest hits: Turkish breads, three meze, lahmacun, shish köfte, chicken shish, pilav, chopped salad and dessert. For a first visit, this is the perfect choice.

The meze all arrived at once, with Turkish bread for scooping. Muhammara was my favourite, and my first time trying it: a paste of sun-dried red pepper and walnuts. If you like sun-dried tomatoes, you’ll love it, though it’s nuttier and deeper. Atom, a thick garlic yoghurt streaked with urfa chilli oil, was cool and refreshing against it. The hummus, finished with chilli butter, was every bit as good as I’d hoped.

The grill course was the heart of the meal. The shish köfte is normally made with minced lamb breast, onion, garlic, peppers and parsley. We asked whether it could be made with beef instead, and the kitchen kindly obliged. The beef version was every bit as good as the original sounds: generously seasoned, and gone from the plate very quickly.

Alongside came pilav, Turkish rice cooked with toasted orzo and topped with crispy onions, and Leydi’s chopped salad, which cut through the richness of everything else on the table. We also added the börek from the main menu: crisp layers of filo filled with sheep’s milk feta and leeks, finished with truffle honey. It was well worth ordering on top.

We finished with künefe, the set’s dessert of shredded pastry and melted cheese drenched in syrup. It was unapologetically sweet and we loved it, though after everything that came before, we couldn’t quite finish it.

We drank their house wine which was excellent. If you want to do it properly, the menu leans towards raki, the anise spirit that is Istanbul’s default companion to a long meal. If you come back for lunch on a weekday, Leydi In The Window runs from 7am to 3pm, Monday to Friday, serving börek baked in the stone oven and barista coffee. It’s an easy stop on the way to St Paul’s or the Barbican.

Bring a group, order the Deluxe and leave room for künefe. For anyone who already loves Turkish food, it’s a generous, varied way to spend an evening. For anyone new to it, muhammara is a good place to start.

To book a table, visit Hyde London