Yeni Umut 2000 Dalston
The head chef at Smoking Goat says a few of his cooks took him here and it became the kitchen's favourite meal after service, and that the grilled quail is
the essence of open-fire cooking(SL.Man).
Why go
A long silver grill runs down the back wall and the room is wooden tables around it (Time Out). That is the whole design. What comes off the charcoal is why four separate sources, across four different kinds of source, point at this address.
Vittles opens its Dalston ocakbasi crawl here: Start at Umut 2000 for ribs to get a feel for the close-up, elbows in, lamb-fat-in-your-hair feel of a good ocakbasi.
The same guide makes the wider case, that you cannot leave London without eating at a traditional British ocakbasi, and that outside Turkey and Berlin no city has this density of Turkish and Kurdish kitchens (Vittles).
The kitchen is not fast on purpose. Order the sea bream and you get told politely to expect half an hour, because they will chargrill it properly. The offal list is the part cooks talk about: lamb's fry, and an ox heart that is not written down anywhere.
Order this / avoid
- Order: lamb ribs, which is the consensus order. Grilled quail. Lamb chops, which Time Out's Kitty Drake described as
hot and perfectly pink with an edge of crispy, spitting fat
(Time Out). Tuvuk sis. The off-menu ox heart, if you ask. Kisir on the side. The bream if you have the half hour. - Avoid: the sigara boregi, which came thick and doughy, and the grilled aubergine salad, which ran oily (Time Out). And do not arrive without cash.
What locals & experts say
- Ben Curtis, head chef at Smoking Goat, on why his kitchen goes:
Umut 2000 in Dalston was introduced to me by a few chefs at Smoking Goat. It's a Turkish ocakbasi restaurant and the grilled quail is the essence of open-fire cooking, belying its status as our favourite casual post-service meal. It's always friendly and the offal options always deliver - especially the lamb's fry.
1 - Hot 4 U, the chef collective, with the order and the practical warning:
Walk in and show yourself to a table. Order the off-menu ox heart and thank me later. It's a 420 hotbox heaven of smoke. Like the tastiest damn smoke there is. If we powered London on Umut lamb rib smoke, I guarantee we'd be much happier little city dwellers. Cash only, so don't be a dum dum and remember your purse.
2 - Vittles, in its newcomer's guide to London food, placing it first on the Dalston crawl:
Start at Umut 2000 for ribs to get a feel for the close-up, elbows in, lamb-fat-in-your-hair feel of a good ocakbasi.
The crawl then goes over the road to Mangal 2, on to Bebek Baklava, and finishes at Oren.3 - Jake Missing, The Infatuation, January 2022, rated in the 8 band, and straight about the competition:
There's something of a perma argument over what is the ocakbasi to eat in in Dalston. One person's Mangal, is another person's Cirrik, which is another person's Umut. We often opt for the latter, if only because elderly Turkish gentlemen have a habit of inviting us to sit down for soup at their table here and we like that... the lamb ribs are Dalston's finest.
4 - Kitty Drake, Time Out, October 2017, who found the best dish and the worst:
So tender I actually gasped mid-mouthful, these chops were the stars of my meal.
And:Not everything was fantastic. Sigari boregi - tubes of filo pastry filled with cheese - came thick and doughey, and the grilled aubergine salad was a little oily.
Her verdict:Eating Turkish in Dalston really doesn't get much better than this.
5
Good to know
- Where: 6 Crossway, N16 8HX, a short walk from Dalston Kingsland Overground.
- Not to be confused with: the other Umut 2000, at 551 Green Lanes N8, which Vittles sends people to on its Green Lanes crawl. Different premises, different borough. There are also an Umut Ocakbasi on West Green Road and an Umut Meat on Green Lanes, and neither is this.
- Booking: walk in and seat yourself.
- Cash: it was cash only when Hot 4 U wrote it up in April 2022 and nothing since says otherwise. Bring notes.
- Price: cheap. Time Out priced dinner for two with drinks and service at around GBP 65 back in 2017.
- Timing: no source publishes opening hours and the venue has no working website, so check before a late run. Allow half an hour if you order the fish.
- Hygiene: Food Standards Agency rating 5, inspected 25 February 2026, Hackney, FHRSID 469809. Clean across all three components.6
- Website: none that works. The address Time Out lists, umut2000.co.uk, no longer resolves.
Verdict
should-visit — Worth the detour, and it will cost you almost nothing. Ben Curtis, head chef at Smoking Goat, says a few chefs took him here and it became the kitchen's favourite casual post-service meal, and that the grilled quail is 'the essence of open-fire cooking'. The chef collective Hot 4 U tells you to walk in, sit yourself down and order the off-menu ox heart, and calls the room a heaven of smoke off the lamb ribs. Vittles opens its Dalston ocakbasi crawl here, sending you for ribs to get 'the close-up, elbows in, lamb-fat-in-your-hair feel of a good ocakbasi'. Jake Missing rated it in the 8 band for The Infatuation and called the lamb ribs Dalston's finest. That is four independent sources across four source types on one long charcoal grill running down the back wall of a room with wooden tables and no ceremony. Time Out's Kitty Drake got the lamb chops in 2017 and gasped, and also found the sigara boregi doughy and the aubergine salad oily, which is the honest picture. It sits at should-visit rather than higher because the field is genuinely contested and everyone says so: as The Infatuation puts it, 'One person's Mangal, is another person's Cirrik, which is another person's Umut', and Vittles' actual advice is to eat at several in one night. Take cash, go hungry, and let the fish take its half hour.