Mangal 2 Restaurant
Ali Dirik came from Istanbul in 1987 and opened what his family says was London's first ocakbasi within four years, then opened this room in 1994. His son Sertac now runs the same charcoal grill after cooking in Copenhagen at 108, Noma's sister restaurant.
Why go
The ocakbasi is a charcoal trench set into the counter, and the rule in this kitchen is that at least one part of every dish crosses it (The Nudge). What changed in 2020, when Ali handed the keys to Ferhat and Sertac, is what goes over it. They buy the meat around the UK, and they buy it unfashionably: cull yaw, which is mutton from a retired ewe, and a beef rib aged forty days from a dairy cow at the end of its working life. Alongside that sit mushroom manti with cordyceps and confit garlic yoghurt, which is a Turkish dumpling holding a Nordic pantry. The Good Food Guide calls the whole thing fine-tuning a charming symphony of old and new
(The Good Food Guide).
Order this / avoid
- Order: the grilled sourdough pide with kaymak butter first, since it is the thing that replaced the free bread. Then cull yaw kofte, lamb shoulder tandir with bulgur and ezme, and the mushroom manti. Finish with mountain-tea ice cream, rhubarb and grilled filo.
- Avoid: turning up with wine. The old BYO policy went in 2020 and a natural wine list took its place. And check the door number: Mangal at 27 Stoke Newington Road is a different restaurant under different ownership.
What locals & experts say
- The Good Food Guide, rated Good, on the second generation's work:
fine-tuning a charming symphony of old and new.
3 - Mike Gibson, Foodism (2018), writing before the reset and still putting it top of the street: this is
the pick of the Turkish restaurants in this stretch of Dalston.
4 - Rupert Hohwieler, The Nudge (2023), on Sertac's kitchen rule: he
takes pride in making sure at least one part of every dish has been blessed by the ocakbasi, which you can admire in action thanks to an open-kitchen.
2 - Awards: 35th best restaurant in the UK at the National Restaurant Awards 2022, and Sertac Dirik was Observer Food Monthly's Young Chef of the Year the same year (Mangal II). It does not appear on the 2026 top 100.6
Good to know
- Where: 4 Stoke Newington Road, Dalston N16 7XN. Two guides print N16 8BH for this address, which is the odd-numbered side of the street.
- Sites: the name is on two doors. This page is Mangal 2 at number 4. Mangal at number 27 is a separate business with its own owners and its own food-hygiene record; Ali Dirik left the original site after opening this one. Ratings, closures and reviews do not cross between them.
- City signature: this is the Turkish ocakbasi entry on London's known-for list, at close to its source. The family's own account is that the first charcoal ocakbasi in the city was theirs.
- Booking: advisable. No readable channel publishes current hours, so call before you commit an evening.
- Hygiene: FSA rating 5, inspected 4 February 2025, with food hygiene and confidence in management both scoring a clean zero and the building at 5.5
- Michelin: not recorded. The guide cache this project holds is stars only, so it establishes neither a listing nor an absence.
Verdict
should-visit — Worth the trip to Dalston for the grill and for what the second generation did with it. Ali Dirik moved from Istanbul in 1987 and opened what his family calls the first ocakbasi in London, then opened this room in 1994. In 2020 he handed it to his sons, and Sertac, who had cooked in Copenhagen at 108, Noma's sister restaurant, pointed the charcoal at British ingredients: cull yaw kofte from retired ewe, 40-day-aged rib from a dairy cow at the end of its working life, mushroom manti with cordyceps. His rule is that at least one component of every dish goes over the ocakbasi, and the open kitchen lets you check. That is London's Turkish live-fire tradition being pushed rather than preserved, which is exactly what the city's signature dish list is for. It holds below the top rung on trajectory: 35th in the country at the 2022 National Restaurant Awards, absent from the 2026 top 100, and no national critic has assessed the kitchen since the reset.