19 Numara Bos Cirrik - Hackney

5:50pm Wednesday 7th November 2007

SITTING in a big airy building right next to Hackney Central Station and round the corner from the Hackney Empire, Turkish restaurant 19 Numara Bos Cirrik 3, is the place to go if you are really hungry.

And we mean really hungry indeed.

Every course comes with a basket of warm, delicious freshly baked Turkish flatbread and no sooner do you make a dent in this than it is whisked away and replaced with another.

But beware the bread, because you need plenty of stomach space to sample Cirrik's voluminous menu.

There are 36 starters alone. Salads, cold starters and hot starters, everything from traditional Mediter-ranean dishes like humus, dolme and meze to chips, turkish salad and Neapolitan aubergine.

For the main course, the diner can choose between a eight vegetarian options, four pasta dishes, two fish platters, 13 pideler (Turkish pizzas), six casserole dishes and a dizzying 26 kebabs.

And if you can still conceive of eating anything after all that, there is a selection of gorgeous gooey desserts.

After an agonising perusal I eventually settled on Karides Tava (£5), or garlicky tasty sauteed tiger prawns. My partner chose extra large Falafal with salad (£4.50).

For some reason a portion of flat chips arrived along with the bread.

At first we thought this was another side dish but found we were charged for it later, more a language mix-up than a deliberate overcharging policy.

I munched my way through an Et Betyi (£10) while my partner somehow devoured a Karisik Kebap (£11.50) (mixed kebab).

As if to prove that the average Brit's idea of kebabs is extremely limited, my dish comprised chunks of tasty kebab meat made of minced lamb, garlic and parsley and spices surrounded by strips of pastry, served on a mound of rice with spoonfulls of yoghurt on top.

All of this was crowned with stripes of a moreish hot, if a touch too salty, sauce and strips of yet more bread.

But it is in the art of the grill that Cirrik, which has two other branches in Hackney excels.

The juicy lamb chunks of the Sis, the slightly charred charcoal tenderness of the lamb chop, a lean chicken kebab and an Adana kebab are melt-in-the-mouth heaven, and certainly the best kebab this reviewer has tasted.

Cirrik, which welcomes children, is a good choice for either a romantic tete a tete or a family dinner.

19 Numara Bos Cirrik 3,
1-3 Amhurst Road,
Hackney,
London, E8 1LL.

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