Royal Istanbul

I watched, initially with horror, as my local (if rather average) Indian restaurant Asia Spice one day covered its windows in newspaper. Luckily, a few weeks later, it reopened as a rather stonking Turkish restaurant.
Now, those of us fortunate enough to live in Harringay, North-​East London may suggest that this area needs another Turkish restaurant like a man in the middle of a desert needs a sandcastle. Green Lanes is blessed with an inordinate number of mostly-​extremely-​good doner and shish kebab houses, many of which do Turkish pizzas and lahmacun as well.
So, what sets Istanbul Palace apart? A few things, really. It’s clearly pitching itself at cuisine rather than fast food. There are NO doner kebabs. All kebab action happens on skewers over the charcoal pit in the restaurant. While I like a genuine Green Lanes doner kebab as much as anyone else, the fact that it’s shish-​only gives the place a slightly different vibe.
The décor is also slightly nicer than many of the other places. Cream coloured soft furnished booths give the place an ambience that is more restaurant than cafeteria. It’s never going to win any design prizes but hey.
Menu is formidable — a stonking selection of Meze, the full list of things that it is possible to cook over charcoal on a skewer and an entire page devoted to Pide, those beautifully shaped Turkish pizzas cooked on site in the wood-​fired oven you can see smouldering away at the back of the restaurant. Prices, bizarrely, are also about 50p lower on average than 5 minutes walk down the road. Oh, and a bottle of wine is £6.
To cap it all they do DELIVERY. Oh yes! Boo-​yah! Now it is possible to have vast amounts of delicious marinated grilled lamb carried to your house. For free if you spend over a tenner.
I’ve tried their Shish kebab, the Beyti (minced) kebab and their lahmacun so far. All excellent. Well worth a go.