Food Explained
If you want to judge a Turkish restaurant in one order, skip the menu poetry and ask for the mixed grill. It's the dish with nowhere to hide — five or six items straight off the charcoal, one after another, each cooked differently, each exposing whether the kitchen actually understands fire. Here's what's on a proper one, and what to look for.
The line-up, in order of seniority. Adana kebab is the anchor: lamb minced by hand with tail fat and red pepper, pressed onto a wide flat skewer. Hand-minced matters — machine-minced meat compacts into a sausage; knife-minced stays loose and juicy. Shish kebab is the purist's cut: cubes of lamb or chicken, marinated, threaded with gaps so the heat reaches every face. Tavuk şiş (chicken) tests the marinade; kuzu şiş (lamb) tests the butcher. Wings are the crowd favourite and the patience test — they need the longest, gentlest heat on the grill.
Then the supporting cast, which separates generous kitchens from stingy ones: grilled tomato and long green pepper (non-negotiable — they're the acid that cuts the fat), buttered rice or bulgur underneath, catching the drippings, and flatbread on the side. Onion salad with sumac if the kitchen is paying attention.
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group dining with mixed grills
Now the charcoal question, because this is where Singapore's 'Turkish grills' divide into two camps. Real charcoal — mangrove or coconut husk — burns hot, dry and slightly smoky, and it can't be faked: it blisters the pepper, chars the fat edges of the Adana, and leaves a faint smoke line in the meat that gas never produces. Gas grills cook evenly and conveniently, and most mall kebab shops use them, but the result reads 'griddled', not 'grilled'. Ask any Turkish chef and he'll tell you the grill is the restaurant. Everything else is garnish.
Timing is the invisible ingredient. The five items on a mixed grill all want different heat for different durations — wings early and slow, shish hot and fast, Adana in between. A kitchen that starts them together serves you something overcooked. A kitchen that staggers them lands everything hot at once. You can't see this from the table, but you can taste it.
How to eat it: don't. Not alone, anyway. A proper mixed grill is built for two to three people and eats best that way — skewers passed, rice shared, peppers fought over. Order meze first, let the grill take its fifteen minutes, and finish with kunefe while the charcoal smell is still in your clothes.
Our mixed grill at LAYALI runs on a charcoal line that's lit from 10am until close at 1am — hand-minced Adana, lamb and chicken shish, wings, the peppers and the sumac onions, all of it. It feeds two generously, three honestly. If you've been eating 'Turkish grill' off a gas flame in a food court, this is the recalibration.
Everything we write about, we cook daily — 10:00am to 1:00am at 257 Beach Road, Kampong Gelam. Charcoal-fired, family-owned, five minutes from Bugis MRT.