Chef Selin Kiazim to open restaurant in Shoreditch

Kiazim, who left Peter Gordon's central London restaurant​ in March 2013, will open Turkish restaurant Oklava at 74 Luke Street in October with the help of Laura Christie, former operations manager at the Salt Yard Group. 

The restaurant, whose name means rolling pin in Turkish, will feature a domed stone oven for baking bread, lahmacun, pides and pastries in-house and much of the cooking will be done over a bespoke charcoal grill. 

Dishes will include Spicy Lamb Koftes, Fennel Yoghurt and Sour Cherry Dressing Chilli-Garlic Chicken with Za'atar Crumb and Çemen Glazed Lamb Cutlets with a Full Turkish Breakfast available at weekends. 

Kiazim, who has Turkish Cypriot roots, told Sliced London in a video interview she had been planning to open a restaurant which cooks over charcoal for a long time. 

She said: "It's only in the last three or four years I've thought to myself I'm going to have my own restaurant and I remember from quite a young age thinking, I'm going to have a restaurant where I cook everything over charcoal and at that point, apart from in kebab shops it wasn't really happening. In the last probably two years it's gone crazy and everyone is opening these wood grills and cooking over charcoal, so I think I need to get in there quickly because I had this idea 10 years ago."

Since leaving Kopapa Kiazim has run a number of pop-up restaurants and events, including Trinkets at the Rooftop Cafe at the Exchange​ in London and a residency at Carousel​. 

Watch the video from Sliced London.