Opening in September, KID follows the success of Dirik’s family-run ocakbaşı restaurant Mangal II and will be his first solo restaurant, drawing on his Turkish heritage along with the skills he has refined throughout his time in kitchens across London and Copenhagen.
The restaurant, which will be located on the corner of Frith Street and Bateman Street, will occupy a Victorian building and will have fire at the heart of its operation.
The menu at KID will reflect the food of Dirik’s upbringing and will feature ingredient-led dishes, honouring techniques passed down through family, with a focus on seasonality and well-sourced British produce. While a Turkish influence runs throughout, the menu will emphasise the flavours of Central Anatolia, where Dirik’s family hails from and where many of these dishes find their origin.
A meal will begin with tombik pide, baked in the wood‑fired oven, and seeded sourdough pide grilled on the mangal, then brushed with kaymak butter, as well as a selection of meze and salatas such as çökelek cheese made in house daily served with summer peas and carosello cucumber; and Turkish sivri peppers with fresh herbs, pomegranate molasses and shavings of kashkaval cheese, which is made and aged in Kars in North Eastern Turkey.
Starters will include içli köfte made with a slow braise of aged ex-dairy beef, roasted onions and grape molasses; and XL scallops from Cornwall served on a bed of wood roasted horoz beans and a sauce of scallop roe, white wine and dried pepper paste.
There will also be larger sharing dishes cooked over charcoal, such as Cornish lamb saddle served with an ezme of roast garlic and sivri peppers, and in KID’s wood oven, using traditional clay‑pot tandır cooking, such as braised goat kid.
To finish, KID will serve traditional turkish coffee and tea alongside Turkish delights and baklavas that will play with seasonal British flavours such as cherry and pecan.
“At its core, KID is a restaurant that aims to show the vastness of Turkish cooking, expressed with the warmth you’d come to expect from someone’s home,” says Dirik.
“Utilising the techniques I grew up learning from my parents, I feel it is an absolute privilege to serve you this summer in London’s most distinctive neighbourhood.”
KID will join Carter’s other London restaurants, OMA, Agora and Smokestak as well as Manteca, which he co-founded with chef Chris Leach.
“I have been a long-term supporter of Mangal II, both in its OG days and then in its reincarnation in 2020 when Sertaç boldly reinvented what Turkish cooking meant for London,” adds Carter.
“What started off as a friendship, has now grown into a partnership and I’m super excited to be joining Sertaç in developing and unravelling KID. Soho represents a new challenge for us and very much looking to be bringing this project to fruition.”