It’s not easy getting into Kid, the fresh-out-the-box new Soho Turkish from restaurateur David Carter and chef Sertaç Dirik. We don’t mean the challenge of securing a table – at the time of writing, there’s decent availability midweek – so much as the challenge of finding the actual way in. Our advice? Aim not for what looks like a door on Frith Street but for what looks like a wall on Bateman Street. Give it a gentle push and you’re in. A small brand stamp of a baby goat is what passes for signage in the if-you-know-you-know era.
Kid is a joint production between two well-regarded industry names. Carter, readers may know from Greek restaurants Oma and Agora, barbecue restaurant Smokestak, and Italian restaurant Manteca (co-founded with Chris Leach). Dirik, meanwhile, is one of the two brothers who made an award-winner of their family’s Turkish grill, Mangal II, in Dalston. But it’s Dirik’s food we’re here for, born of memories of the table at home, the family restaurant, and annual trips to the Aegean. Carter and Dirik are both at the open kitchen pass when we visit, Carter in front, Dirik behind. You can see them talking, tasting, talking and tasting again.
Carter’s longtime design collaborators Box 9 are behind the design. They’ve created a stylish space lined with dark brown bricks laid vertically and new arched windows for a retro 1970s look. Turkish music, never too intrusive, sets the scene. What good fortune to have Kid arrive on the London scene at the same time as Kismet, Dom Hamdy and Keiran Mustafa’s Turkish “meyhane” in Borough.
The first dish out is tombik pide, a puffy flatbread brushed with kaymak butter, which we swipe through taramasalata decorated with fried Roscoff onion shards and frizzled capers. To do justice to the dip, we’d need at least one more pide, but the realisation that we’ve already over-ordered dawns quickly. Not to suggest that the waiter upsold but the suggestion of one or two from this section, one or two from that section (sections include ‘snacks’, ‘bread’, ‘meze’, ‘small’, ‘oven’, ‘grill’, ‘salata’) is permission to overdo it.
Still, our lack of restraint allows us to see a lot: a snack of coarse Kid goat suçuk (sausage) with grilled peach purée; frilly white cheese börek in a lake of courgette sauce; and içli köfte – bulgur dumplings stuffed with meat – richer and saucier than I’ve ever seen them. That will be the ex-dairy cow filling and the plentiful yogurt and chilli oil accompaniment.
Braised kid shoulder is the dish that inspired the restaurant’s name, here with freekeh, yogurt and a large pickle selection (aubergine, fig, okra, chickpea…) for two. On the grill section, choices include Galata mackerel, a version of the famous fish sandwich sold on Istanbul’s Galata Bridge, and adana köfte, a mangal classic.
Dessert is a palate-cleansing scoop of fresh mint mastic ice cream, enjoyed with Turkish tea (five parts Ceylon to one part Earl Grey) in dainty glasses, as we contemplate the dishes we should have had, the dishes we will have. Kid’s here to stay. There’s time to see it grow up.
WHERE 53-55 Frith Street, W1D 4SJ
FOLLOW @kid_soho
BOOK kid.london
