Green Lanes’ hidden gem. Cyprus House is located away from the bustle of the main road on the ground floor of a Turkish-Cypriot community centre, that could easily be mistaken for a residential house. From Tuesday to Thursday it is only open for lunch, serving home-cooked Cypriot meals — caul-fat-encased şeftali kebabs made from minced lamb and offal, souvlaki, and molohiya, the mucilaginous bitter leaf that offers a taste of home for nostalgic palates. On Friday and Saturday mezze is £20 per person, which encompasses an almost endless but impeccable, rhythmic parade of cold starters, seafood, vegetables, fish and meat. The highlight? A whole lamb’s head, with the flesh and fat judiciously pulled from the bone, served with a globe of brain and soft tongue meat. Booking is very much advisable.

The closest thing Green Lanes has to an institution, this grocers-cum-butchers-cum-bakery-cum-patisserie has been serving the Turkish-Cypriot population since 1981. One of a smattering of shops left which are still decidedly Cypriot rather than mainland Turkish or Kurdish, the diverse clientele and staff still includes all the communities of Harringay, by virtue of being the best. All the usual amenities of a supermarket can found here with a Turkish-Cypriot accent — the outstanding selection of sucuk (Turkish sausage) has a section all to itself, while the bakery sells small snacks of pide, borek and koupes (bulgur and meat croquettes) for between £1 and £2 a pop.

The name notwithstanding, the sight of a woman (and it is always a woman) in the window kneading dough, stuffing it and frying it on a curved pan announces that the specialisation of this cafe is gözleme. It’s possible to eat in, but these are ideally consumed in a hurry walking up and down the Lanes — fresh and piping hot from the pan, burning the tops of impatient mouths. Most gözleme are keenly priced at £2 to £2.50 depending on the stuffing, and it’s difficult to go wrong with spinach and cheese, potato, or minced meat. The real steal here, though, is takeaway manti — fingernail-sized dumplings filled with minced meat, that can be bought frozen by the kilo. These will provide sustenance for several meals, with the mere addition of garlic yoghurt and chilli butter: a lazy chef’s dream. 

Hala is arguably the best all-round restaurant on this stretch of Green Lanes. It means “aunt” in Turkish, a name that’s reflected in the generosity of the home-style food, and by the sight of Turkish aunties making gözleme in the window every morning. Diners in the mood for meat should try the adana, kaburga (ribs) and pirzola (chops), mopped up with bread blessed with the juices and fat from the grill, but groups should make room for their excellent versions of içli köfte and manti instead of ordering starters. Solo eaters should also consider the humble paça çorbası: The Platonic ideal of a meat soup taken to its rich, buttery extreme, only achievable by careful stewing of gelatinous sheep’s foot. With ayran and some pickles, this is the ultimate late-night hangover cure.    

Since long before everyone went wild for jackfruit tacos and fried seitan, this small cafe (the London outpost of a Turkish chain) has been quietly making some of the tastiest vegan meat-substitute food in the capital. ÇiğKöftem unsurprisingly specialises in çiğ köfte — usually a blend of lamb, bulgur and spices eaten raw like tartare — here made entirely from wheat and tomatoes. Wrapped in bread or lettuce, with the addition of herbs and chilli sauce, it makes a very wholesome and convincing alternative. It should be noted: the entire restaurant is not vegan. Içli köfte (minced meat encased in deep-fried balls of durum wheat) and tantuni (cigar-shaped rolls of chopped, spiced beef) are both very much non-vegetarian and delicious. 

Maybe the best single-dish restaurant in the whole of London, this dessert spin-off next door to Antepliler does one thing only and one thing well: künefe. The Turkish variant of the pan-Arab dessert, cheese is placed between two discs of wiry kadayif pastry, fried in skillets until molten, then doused in syrup and pistachios. Künefe can be ordered plain, but two things are essential to cut through the sweetness: clotted cream, and a strong Turkish tea fresh from the samovar. In the evenings, Künefe Salonu also serves as a social hub for the area, with most seats taken up by Turkish families or groups of friends, with passers-by stopping in for a chat (and a bite if they are lucky.)

Moving down the east side of Green Lanes, Antepliler is hard to miss, now greedily sprawling over five shopfronts dedicated to different specialities. The restaurant proper, however, originally made its reputation on the back of the quality of its baked goods. A custom-made oven takes up one of the windows and is in use all day (even on Christmas) baking impossibly light and crisp lahmacun which can be taken away, and boat-shaped pide. Apart from the breads, Antepliler also specialises in dishes from Gaziantep in south Turkey, which it is named after. Try the fistik kebab (£12), a variation on adana with bright green Antep pistachios and cheese, or the special hummus topped with chopped lamb, before ordering in some walnut or pistachio baklava from their baklavaci next door.

Arguably the best ocakbasi in Harringay, Diyarbakır undeservedly flies under the radar, partly due to its austere, no-frills nature. The cooking here hails from Turkey’s southern Anatolia region, and grilled meats are uniformly outstanding with a particularly strong yogurtlu selection (which is more of the same, but with the added virtues of yoghurt and browned butter.) Fish — so often abused and overcooked on the grill — is given the respect it deserves, making levrek (sea bass) and cupra (sea bream) both good choices. Everything is cooked with care, and even the freebies of house-baked bread and burnt onions cooked in pomegranate molasses are a cut above most. Diyarbakır is also the only restaurant on the road with a no alcohol policy, but ayran (salted yoghurt) and salgam (turnip juice) flow.