Offering: Large Doner Kebab
Establishment: Topkapi Kebab House, Edinburgh
Date and time: 19th November 2016, 23:15
Price: £7
Seating: Two seats, one table.
Since 1982, Topkapi Kebab House has served predominantly those living in the western area of the city with kebabs, pizzas and burgers. As per usual, this blog will attempt to decipher the intricacies and subtleties if the doner offering. One of the most notable things about Topkapi is that they offer a mixed kebab at the price of a mere £24. At that price, you could get a two course meal and drink at an average priced resteraunt or a holiday not very far, to price a takeaway kebab so highly, one must assume that the quality of this doner will be far superior to your average babbery.
Noticing that Topkapi only serves one size of kebab, I was alarmed enough to have second thoughts when I noticed the chef grab a polystyrene box that would normally be associated with a smaller sized kebab. I was about to go next door to the former Samsun's and now City Kebab House when I managed to stop myself. I remembered some time ago, around a decade or so when I had a very tasty pizza from Topkapi - it was that promise that made me remain.
I asked the chef to provide all the cuttings, from a nice varied salad to the salad and chilli sauces - he kindly obliged. Whilst my kebab was being prepared, I turned to the left and noticed a poster declaring a Topkapi kebab as the "only kebab you can eat sober" - I found this slightly tasteless but this also added to the weight of expectation that Topkapi had imposed on herself. This kebab had to be high standard.
My first impressions were that the kebab if seriously small (what is this- My First Doner?) - for that price, it should be about a third bigger - yes, it's well packed and it is holding itself together but the fact remains, if Topkapi are charging £7 for a kebab that easily fits in a small container, a container probably more suited to a baked potato then you can't help but feel robbed.
The salad does include a supporter you rarely see, but whenever they do pop up, it's always a pleasure - red cabbage. I feel as though more kebab shops should give this purple companion the time of day - it really does add a tangy, zesty crunch to the whole experience, an ingredient worthy of any doner dish.
The sauces were both quite watery, however I did really like the tangy salad sauce. It's sister sauce, the chilli was very disappointing, it did have a sweetness to it but nothing resembling a burn.
The salad does include a supporter you rarely see, but whenever they do pop up, it's always a pleasure - red cabbage...
I was beginning to feel seriously disappointment in this kebab, it's sauces, the size and the price point were beginning to take it's toll on me, that was until I realised where the money actually went - the meat. The meat in this kebab was undeniably high quality, the kind of meat one would expect would have been a high quality cut with plenty of marbling. Make no mistake, this meat is some of the best quality you can get in a take-away in Edinburgh, but sadly, that's where it ends. The seasoning of the meat is not distinctive at all, it seems like they've treated the meat as a high quality steak whereby the only seasoning needed is salt and pepper and you let the cut do the talking, for me this is mediocre. If the accompanying sauces had more character, only then would such an approach be successful, unfortunately, that was not the case and the whole doner project really falls flat.
One of the more notable aspects of this doner wonder is that it's pita bread base holds together very well. At no point did it look as though it could not be contained and this is shown in the photo above, way better than anyone could put in words.
Whilst I was tucking into this doner, a drunken man covered in blood approached the counter asking about the mixed kebab, he promptly stumbled out after hearing the price. I felt as though the chef just said it was £24 to get rid of an awkward looking customer but upon greater inspection, the prices marked on the lit signs also signaled what was conveyed to the yob. He didn't even stick around after the chef suggested that he could offer a smaller one for £12 - almost double the price of mixed kebab in many other places around town.
Overall, tonight I felt that bleeding drunken man's pain. I realised why he left after hearing the prices. I'm sad to say, for tonight only, he maybe had greater intuition than I did. Or maybe not as he had clearly been on the losing end of a brutal beating.
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