Leydi Review: A Modern Turkish Restaurant in The City
There are plenty of restaurants around St Paul’s and the City designed for the office crowd, but Leydi feels rather different. Set inside the Hyde London City hotel on Old Bailey, just across from the Old Bailey courthouse and within easy reach of St Paul’s Cathedral and Bank, the Turkish restaurant has created a space that feels distinctly removed from the business district outside.
Leydi has its own entrance on Holborn Viaduct, giving it more of a neighbourhood restaurant feel than you might expect from a hotel dining room. When we visited on a late Sunday afternoon, the welcome was warm, with a handful of tables occupied and people sitting around the bar with cocktails. The room was bright, colourful and carefully designed, with pale pink walls, emerald green details, gold accents and artwork throughout. It manages to feel polished without becoming formal, which suits Leydi's all-day approach to dining.
The restaurant comes from Turkish-Cypriot chef Selin Kiazim, whose previous East London restaurant Oklava established a reputation for modern interpretations of Turkish and Cypriot cooking. At Leydi, the menu moves between familiar Turkish dishes and more contemporary combinations, with meze, pide, mangal and breakfast all forming part of the offering.
The menu is generous enough that choosing what to order takes some consideration, so the recommendations from the team were particularly helpful.
Meze: Starters at Leydi
We began with two meze dishes, the sort of small plates that encourage you to keep something in the middle of the table and eat a little of everything. Our first choice was the tomato ezme, a vibrant mixture of peppers, parsley and pomegranate molasses. It was fresh, slightly spicy and full of acidity, and worked particularly well with Leydi's Turkish bread.
The bread deserves a mention of its own. It is slightly thicker than the pita you might find at more commercial Turkish restaurants and arrives with Antep pepper salça, salted butter and sesame seeds. Warm, substantial and slightly chewy, it was exactly the kind of bread that makes you realise you should have ordered more.
Our second meze was smoked aubergine with garlic and mustard. Smooth and deeply smoky, it brought out a different side of the bread, particularly alongside the sweetness and heat of the Antep pepper. Together, the two dishes made a good introduction to the menu: fresh, smoky and generously seasoned without becoming heavy.
Drinks at Leydi
To drink, we chose the Colombard 2024 Le Pionnier Blanc and an Aperol Spritz. On a warm Sunday afternoon, the latter was an easy choice alongside the smoky, grilled flavours that would follow.
Second dish: Börek to share
For our next course, we shared the traditional börek, made from layers of crisp filo pastry with sheep's milk feta and leeks, finished with a truffle honey glaze.
The combination could easily have become too rich, but the salty feta and sweetness of the honey were well balanced. The pastry remained delicate and crunchy, while the leeks gave the filling a softer, more savoury quality. It was one of those dishes that works particularly well as a sharing plate, with everyone going back for another piece.
Main: From the Mangal
It would be difficult to visit a Turkish restaurant and ignore the mangal section.
We chose the lamb chops, served as bone-in cutlets with dipping pide, grilled ezme-marinated peppers and onions. The lamb was cooked well, tender enough to come cleanly from the bone, while the char from the grill gave the meat the smoky flavour you'd expect from a good mangal.
We also ordered the lamb köfte, made with minced lamb breast, onion, garlic, peppers and parsley. The herbs kept the meat fresh and aromatic, while the smoke from the grill worked its way through the mince. It was recognisably Turkish in flavour but presented with the polish you'd expect from a restaurant in Central London.
The two mains worked well together: the chops offered the simplicity of good grilled meat, while the köfte brought more seasoning and herbs to the table.
Dessert at Leydi
For dessert, we opted for the seasonal fruits with dessert sweet wine, served in a clay pot over crushed ice alongside a scoop of homemade ice cream.
It was easily one of the most visually appealing dishes of the meal. The presentation felt playful without being overworked, and the combination of chilled fruit, sweet wine and fresh ice cream made a fittingly light finish after the grilled dishes.
The Verdict
Leydi is an interesting addition to the Central London restaurant scene, particularly for anyone looking for Turkish food near St Paul’s, Bank or the City. Set inside the Hyde London City hotel on Old Bailey, it has the polished surroundings you might expect from a hotel restaurant, while its separate entrance and neighbourhood-style dining room give it an identity of its own.
The design is perhaps the first thing you notice. Pale pink and green run through the room, with rounded architectural details, decorative lighting and artwork giving the space a softer, more residential feel. Even the bathrooms continue the aesthetic, switching to darker tones that contrast with the brightness of the main dining room.
The food is where Leydi makes its strongest argument. The menu takes familiar Turkish flavours and gives them a more contemporary setting without losing the smoky, generous character that makes this style of cooking so appealing. Our meal moved from fresh, punchy meze to crisp börek, charcoal-grilled lamb and a more playful dessert, and there was very little to fault on the plate.
The service, however, was noticeably less consistent. When we arrived, we were quickly ushered inside and passed from one member of staff to another, which made the welcome feel somewhat hurried. Later, after we had finished eating, our empty plates remained on the table for around 40 minutes without anyone checking whether we wanted to continue with the menu or were ready to leave. It is a small but significant detail in a restaurant where the surroundings and food suggest a more attentive experience.
Ultimately, the food and atmosphere make Leydi worth visiting. The service needs some refinement, but for Turkish dining in the City, particularly around St Paul’s and Bank, there is enough here to make it a restaurant worth knowing about.
