Cafe Istanbul

Overview

Café Istanbul is one of the more authentic-seeming Turkish restaurants around Wellington, and has quite a captivating, exotic feel. It’s worth heading here for more than just the standard post-town kebab consumption as they have a lot more to offer than just kebabs - including shisha, sometimes belly dancers, and great staff. Said staff are a pleasure, even putting up with some remarkably bizarre drunken antics (there may have been a mint-theft on an embarrassingly large scale at one point, but we don’t need to go into that), which is a serious point to their credit.

Café Istanbul is a fun and different place to take a date, or your mum, but is also a BYO meaning that your evening could end up both beginning and ending with kebabs, just to shake things up a bit (this also proves the versatility of the mighty kebab – there is no bad time to have one). It is the perfect destination for dining at any end of the class spectrum (ranging from a romantic date, to a weary and utterly hammered way-home feed).

In order to sample one of their delectable kebabs, only $8 needs to be parted with. This will then make you the happy owner of an enormous (and delicious – these guys nail the sauce ratio) falafel kebab, which is hot, tightly wrapped, flavoursome, and equal parts crunchy and soft. Pretty hard to argue with the deliciousness of that.

A restaurant which can cater to every need, and level of class; a difficult feat and one well worth experiencing for oneself.