Sedir
4 Theberton St
N1 0QX
Date of Last Visit: Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
The Victims: Gerry, Ben, Matt, Carolyn, Anne, Tobias…and I feel like I'm forgetting someone.
The Background: We'd been to St. Alban's for the beer festival. Drinking beer creates hunger. So we found ourselves on Upper Street, walking from one restaurant to the next, seeing if they'd take eight people. No one would. Until finally, we entered the very empty Sedir–always a bad sign when you're empty at 8 p.m. on a Saturday–and they said "Eight? Sure, no problem."
The Smell: Sedir smells like gasoline. It takes me a while to figure this out. I start imagining that we're all going to be die from chemical inhalations. But then I realize it's the stupid lamps. The stupid lamp oil makes the whole place smell like nail polish remover or something. Uggh. Headache.
The Food: I order our server's favorite dish–the Iskender–it's grilled meatballs on a bed of diced bread & yoghurt, coated with a secret recipe sauce. When the dish arrives, I attempt to send it back, thinking that they've given me the wrong order. Because you know, my entire life? During my entire life, MEATBALLS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ROUND.
So I eat a few pieces of meatballs (?) and have a spoonful of whatever it is that the meat is sitting on. Well, it's exactly what the menu said. Yogurt. And bread. There's a lot of meat. And a lot of yogurt. And a lot of bread. I get bored after about three bites. And it's just so gosh darned gloopy. Gloopy is really the best way to describe it. Gloopy meat and gloopy yogurt and gloopy wet bread. No thank you.
The Verdict: Eh. Not for me.
2 comments
A great iskender is a wonderful thing. This place sounds a bit silly, as most places would make clear that it’s adana (Turkish kofte) on bread with yoghurt and some sort of red sauce (with butter), so I urge you to try it at another Turkish place before writing the dish off.
Empty on a Saturday night though, yikes.
Iskender is wonderful at Gem, just up the road from there.
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