Elif
A Turkish grill and bar at 22 Castle Street — mezze, mangal and a proper cellar, in the middle of Liverpool's commercial district.
Everything starts
at the charcoal
The mangal — the open charcoal grill — is the heart of a Turkish kitchen, and it is the heart of this one. Lamb and chicken go on over coals, not gas, and come off when they are ready rather than when the ticket says so.
Around it sits everything the grill needs: adana chopped and seasoned by hand, köfte rolled in-house, vine leaves stuffed for the yalancı dolma, aubergines smoked until they collapse for the patlıcan tarator and the ali nazik. The pots — güveç, kuzu incik, the moussakas — come out of the oven in earthenware and go straight to the table.
It is generous food. Rice with almost everything, bread with the mezze, and mixed grills that scale from one plate up to a table of four.
See the à la carte
A grand address
on Castle Street
Castle Street is Liverpool's old banking and insurance quarter, and Elif is literally one of the banks: the former Parr's Bank at number 22, built 1899–1902 to a design by Richard Norman Shaw with Willink & Thicknesse, and listed Grade II* since 1952.
It works at both ends of the day. Lunch is quiet and quick, with a set menu for anyone on a clock. By evening the room fills, the bar gets busy, and the tables stretch out. The banquette takes couples; the long marble table in the private room takes a party of twenty.
A wine list with
a long tail
Most Turkish restaurants stop at a house red. This one does not.
The by-the-glass list is honest and well priced, and there is Turkish wine on it — Kayra Öküzgözü and Narince from Anatolia — where it belongs, next to the food it was grown for. Beyond that the list keeps going: Chablis and Meursault, Barolo, Rioja Gran Reserva, Provence rosé, and, at the far end, mature Chassagne-Montrachet and first-growth Pauillac.
The bar does the rest — classics mixed properly, a set of house cocktails, nine gin serves built around Fever-Tree, and Yeni and Beylerbeyi rakı by the single, the double or the bottle.
Drinks & wine