Meyze, Chandos Road: 'Nothing your air fryer couldn’t spit out in time for The Traitors on a Thursday night'
More reminiscent of a steam room than of the Aegean coast
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Assuming a residency on Chandos Road is not for the faint-hearted. There’s a Michelin neighbour wheeling produce fresh from his farm up and down the pavement and slinging out bacon sandwiches all weekend. A competing smell of seafood, fresh or deep-fried depending on which side of the road you are walking. And a Korean-French-Italian love triangle at the centre. All of them begging for attention.
Meyze is doing its best to fit in and it does have one advantage: founder Ece Seval is well-acquainted with the Chan-chaos community. After studying baking and running Bakeaway on the same site for four years, Meyze was recently born out of a desire to return to the dishes that shaped her childhood. If recent posts on Instagram are to be believed, Meyze is already a roaring success — but I was keen to see if it lived up to the claims when one hadn’t been #invited.
Meyze claims to promote sharing, connection and discovery through the colourful world of mezze — a pillar of Turkish cuisine that originated thousands of years before tapas, small plates, picky teas or girl dinners. Comprising hot and cold options, the menu offers a range of meat-free mezze items including dips, seafood, casseroles and flatbreads, alongside a concise regional wine list.
Despite the tasteful wooden furniture and tea-light adorned tables, the restaurant’s first hurdle is to shake the feeling that you are inside a café. Unfortunately, given the poky layout, single bathroom and unforgiving reality that you are inside what was a café for four years — this is a tough ask.
Whilst elegantly laid up and soundtracked to a pleasurable volume, with the humid kitchen just meters away from the sub-zero street with no ventilation, the windows suffer from a thick layer of condensation which leaves everything feeling a little wet. It certainly doesn’t sell the restaurant to passers-by, who would more likely mistake it for a steam room.
Drippiness aside, what was lacking in atmosphere was made up for in warm introductions. Assertive without being fussy, the simple menu breakdown, recommendation of the mushroom casserole and confirmation of whether I was happy with a drier wine choice was enough for me to feel attended to yet not patronised. The wine, a Kayra Narince (£8.50/£36) — the middle offering of three Turkish whites — was pleasantly crisp and light bodied.
Following the guidance of ordering two or three plates per person, we selected five dishes alongside the complimentary basket of sourdough, which could be refilled for £2.50 to £4 depending on hunger levels. Perhaps I am greedier than I realised, but this was not as much food as I thought it would be. Given that we followed instructions and neither myself nor my companion are the most gluttonous of diners, I would recommend a little more to those with hungry bellies or six foot-something partners whose forks like to go wandering.
The Meyze-style stuffed mussels and spiced rice (£13) was sweet and aromatic with the rice certainly doing the legwork for the blander carbohydrates on the table, namely the batata harra (£7). What I had hoped would be a spicy Middle Eastern answer to Spain’s well-loved patatas bravas unfortunately felt more tater-tot-esque. Deep fried potatoes are nonetheless always a hit, but these weren’t anything your air fryer couldn’t spit out in time for The Traitors on a Thursday night. What they did make, however, was an excellent vehicle for the supreme Antakya-style hummus (£7.50). Dressed with hot chilli butter, tomato and pickles, this was thick, creamy and drenched in oil and filled me with the fizzy nostalgia of a paper-table-clothed taverna on a childhood holiday to Greece.
Also from the cold mezze selection were marinated anchovies in extra virgin olive oil (£12.50). Delicately decorated with dollops of sweetcorn purée and green salsa, these were the preferred seafood choice of the evening. The prawn casserole however, a take on the traditional Turkish dish karides güveç (£13.50) and the most expensive item on the menu, felt unexciting by comparison.
Whilst the prawns themselves were meaty and tasty, the rich tomato and mozzarella sauce they’d been lathered with lacked elegance and left the dish singing more to the tune of Bella Italia than freshly-fished from the turquoise coast. The mushroom casserole (£11.50), the vegetarian alternative which swapped the prawns for mushrooms at a marginally reduced cost, was equally unimpressive and felt a wasted choice within our small selection and left me wishing we’d had the foresight to overrule the opening recommendation and select the vegan lahmacun or calamari instead.
Rather than cliff diving headfirst into the Aegean, the Meyze experience felt a little more keep-your-arm-bands-and-translation-headset on for the organised boat tour — still nice, don’t get me wrong, but nowhere near as exhilarating. It was always going to be difficult to compete with Chandos Road’s heavyweight lineup, but I’m not sure Redland’s perusers are missing out if they can’t see Meyze for the clouded windows and end up in the likes of Dongnae, Snobby’s or One Fish Street instead.
All words and photos by Meg Foulk, edited by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Meyze, 16 Chandos Road, Redland, BS6 6PE
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