Turkish Pide By Celebrated Restaurateur Is Coming Back to London

Eater has learnt that the Turkish pide restaurant started by Alan Yau, Babaji, is scheduled to open in High Street Kensington in west London this summer. It comes after the sudden closure of the brand’s original site on Wardour Street in Soho last September. That site, which is now a Princi bakery, had opened in 2015, though Yau had not been involved since 2017.

Babaji Pide, described as “a casual dining Turkish restaurant with pide at the hear of the menu,” has since opened a premises in Dubai and its website says in addition to the site at 64 Kensington High Street in London, opposite the Whole Foods Market, it will also “soon” open in Istanbul.

The website states that the restaurant is scheduled to open this spring, though it is thought it is more likely to launch later in the summer.

Pide, which is often referred to as “Turkish pizza,” is a boat-shaped flat bread cooked in a wood oven, and served with a variety of toppings that may include ground lamb, or beef; ‘Sucuklu,’ with Turkish sausage or ‘Peynirli’, with lashings of butter and cheese.

Yau, who is still associated to Babaji on the brand’s inactive Twitter page, opened another pide restaurant, Yamabahçe, which operates under the slogan #betterpide, on James Street in Marylebone in 2017.

More soon.