Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
1
It wasn’t Plan A to have lunch here. Or Plan B. Plan A didn’t have any tables and we were on our way to Plan B when we spotted this new opening in the premises of the short-lived Kebab Erbil. There’s a short lunchtime menu at a bargain £11.95 for two courses. Had to be worth a try. Inside, there doesn’t look to have been much change, except the menu now seems fully Turkish, rather than Kurdish.
There’s a good houmous to start for one of us. And, for the other, two crisp muska borek – triangular pastry parcels filled with spinach and cheese. There’s flatbread to share. For a main course, my partner had falafel, very light and flavoursome. It came with a mound of rice and mixed salad. I had a kebab. Well, of course, I did – I’m male and northern – when am I not going to have a kebab. This was an adana kebab – moist, well flavoured from using fairly fatty lamb and a slight hint of spice. It also came with the rice and salad.
Decent enough lunch but I bet they were disappointed we were the only customers. Of course, the village High Street has two other Turkish restaurants, both well established, and I suspect Cappadocia may struggle to survive against that competition, as there’s nothing to set it apart.
There was a Cappadocia on our list for our recent Bristol visit, actually two, because the earlier location opened in Bath, and a more recent one in Bristol. But we never made it to either (walked past both). I don’t think there’s any connection, besides their name taken from an interesting region of Turkiye.
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
4
It didnt. We were in the village this lunchtime and spotted that it had closed and been replaced by a Japanese/Filipino place. No website or even a menu in the window, so no way of judging if it’s worth a visit.
There were a lot of Filipinos at the US embassy in my hometown, and I was lucky to be invited to a few family events. The lumpia are the best I’ve had.
We also visited a great & unfortunately hugely popular Filipino resto in Philly twice last fall, once with fellow HO @Bigley9
