On Friday evening Mrs BNM and I had the pleasure of meeting up with our old friends Celia and Ian at EV near Waterloo. I’d heard good things about EV from the people on kudocities, but the closest I’d ever been to eating there was when I once stood outside it on my way home from work. So not very close at all. Let’s face it, you don’t get to truly enjoy a meal, much less appreciate each course’s subtle nuances, merely by loitering in the general area.
Image courtesy London SE1 community website
EV is a Turkish restaurant situated in a small street that seems to be full of nothing but EV-branded shops. There’s an EV bar and an EV food store as well as the EV restaurant, all facing on to the same street that should probably be renamed EV Avenue. It’s difficult to invoke the exotic ambience of Turkey in London SE1, and to be fair the owners haven’t really tried. Instead they have created a terrific drinking / eating / wholefood-buying area, with loads of tables set outside amongst a forest of pot plants. It’s all very relaxed and unpretentious.
EV is a member of the TAS group of restaurants and the place is reviewed on a local website here. The food was delicious, as Turkish food often is. I recommend the lamb from the very reasonably-priced set menu.
Warning. Soft sell ahead
The rockface tombs at Dalyan.
Anyway, eating Turkish cuisine was appropriate as Celia and Ian are now property owners over there. They’ve bought a tw0-bedroomed apartment in Dalyan, a small-ish town famous for its Roman rock tombs, a reed-banked river (where parts of The African Queen were filmed) and, a short boat trip away, an absolutely stunning beach.
If you gauge holiday resorts using the football shirt index, Dalyan scores an acceptable 7:100. So for every hundred British men you see in the town, only about seven of them will be wearing shirts bearing the name of their favourite football player. Plus they’ll have brand new trainers in order to comply with some kind of holiday law.
If you’re interested in a holiday in Dalyan our friends’ apartment sounds ideal. You can check out the details and availability here. We’d be going back ourselves but we’ve been twice now and it’s a big planet with plenty of other places to visit. So you have a go. Go on.
Some photos from previous Dalyan trips
We spent a week island-hopping on board this impressive gulet back in 2007
Our hotel pool. Not Celia and Ian's. Theirs doesn't have a mushroom thing in it.
Mmm.Perhaps we can go back just one more time...
BraveNewMalden 