The best Turkish cuisine in Los Angeles? Try it at Lokl Haus in Santa Monica

On a recent Saturday night in Santa Monica, under a white tent, the lone waiter at the pop-up restaurant Lokl Haus Kitchen rushed to our table with three plates of döner kebab.

He had snagged them from an adjacent building that serves as a prep kitchen for the Lokl Haus cafe, less than 300 feet away. Casual passersby might not notice, but the two spaces make for a rare spot in Los Angeles County for great Turkish food.

In the kitchen, chef Hüsnü Kahramanoğlu stood in front of a vertical rotisserie filled with layers of marinated beef shoulder, interspersed with marbled lamb fat for added flavour. His right hand held a long, thin shearing knife to cut strips of meat, which he scooped up with the large wooden spoon in his left hand.

Lokl Haus Kitchen pop-up restaurant in Santa Monica offers döner kebab on Wednesday and Saturday nights.

Our first course consisted of döner kebab wrapped in pita bread with pickles, tomatoes and sliced ​​onions, all mixed with coarsely chopped parsley and sumac. Each bite resonated with a crunch. Alternating between two sauces, roasted red pepper sauce and cacik (thick yogurt mixed with diced cucumber), the flavors adjusted like a guitarist tuning his strings.

The second variation involved rearranging the same ingredients in separate piles on and around the buttered rice. It was satisfying to taste the meat alone this way: some pieces were crisp and golden, others velvety, with the aroma of white pepper lingering from the marinade.

Then there was the Iskender kebab, the richest and my favorite. A buttery tomato sauce coated the meat, followed by an additional drizzle of sizzling brown butter and a generous dollop of yogurt. Cubes of fresh pide (flatbread) lined the platter beneath the meat, soaking up all the sauce. Sliced, summer-ripe tomatoes and a lightly charred green chile, prizes from the morning run to the Santa Monica farmers market, added freshness.

Halfway through devouring our feast of food in the kitchen of Lokl Haus, Defne Karabatur nodded in appreciation. “This tastes like home,” she said.

Karabatur is an audience engagement fellow at The Times. She was born in Connecticut but grew up primarily in Istanbul, where her parents were raised, before returning to the United States to attend college at UC Berkeley.

Senem Sanli, owner of Lokl Haus coffee shop and Lokl Haus Kitchen pop-up restaurant.

Poached eggs topped with garlic yogurt and browned butter infused with Aleppo pepper.

“Where are the good Turkish restaurants in Los Angeles?” he asked me during his time working with the Food team. It was an excellent question to which I had no satisfactory answer. Among the vast culinary possibilities of our city, I have identified little representation of the vast cuisine of Turkey.

However, a few weeks after our initial conversation, Karabatur learned of a pop-up location operating on Wednesdays and Saturdays that served doner kebab and was frequented mostly by Turkish expats. It turned out to be one aspect of a multi-faceted operation that helped fill the gaps in our deficit.

Senem Sanli, also originally from Istanbul, was making a living as a local private chef before the pandemic. She and her husband regrouped after the lockdowns by opening Lokl Haus in November 2021. The small, chic cafe has one table, a window-facing counter, and walls filled with playful pop art prints in Santa Monica’s Mid-City neighborhood. Its menu has broad appeal: various sweet and savory toasts and a granola bowl, coffee cake with a cinnamon bow, and a grilled cheese sandwich that oozes well during lunch hours.

Breakfast at Lokl Haus Café: Try the menemen, poached eggs in tomato and pepper sauce.

But the biggest draw is the Turkish breakfast dishes.

First up, I’d recommend the çilbir – poached eggs coated in garlicky yoghurt and then drenched in Aleppo pepper-infused brown butter (imagine a crispy chilli reinterpreted with dairy). Scoop it all up with a slice of sourdough toast, then finish off what’s left with a spoon. The menemen – eggs poached in a tomato and pepper sauce – is reminiscent of shakshuka, but with a thicker, less soupy consistency. Both taste bracing but are deeply comforting.

Two other creations revolve around tradition. A thick piece of bread holds seven-minute-boiled eggs, the yolks still turning from runny to pasty as they set, with flecks of labneh and muhammara and flecks of Aleppo pepper and black sesame. A dish Sanli calls the “self-care breakfast” also includes a seven-minute-boiled egg along with cubed feta cheese, mixed olives, chopped tomato and cucumber, and small piles of dried fruit and nuts. I like this for an extra snack if two of us are sharing çilbir or menemen.

A Turkish friend was kind enough not to judge me for ordering strong, chocolate-flavored Turkish coffee, served in a small pot called a cezve, first thing in the morning. But she reminded me that it is typically an afternoon drink and that tea is the more common choice for breakfast. Lokl Haus serves a comforting chai: tannic black tea brewed with cinnamon, cardamom, star anise and other sweetening spices.

Senem Sanli and her husband opened Lokl Haus coffee shop in Santa Monica in 2021.

Thick Turkish coffee for an afternoon drink.

Inside the Lokl Haus café.

Sanli initially rented out the kitchen at the nearby commissary to bake and prepare other foods for Lokl Haus and for event catering. Missing the pleasures of a carefully prepared döner kebab, he hired Kahramanoğlu and began opening Lokl Haus’s pop-up kitchens in late 2023, installing seating spaces at the entrance in front of the building. He rounds out the experience with other tastes of home: Uludag Gazoz (selective-water soft drinks with flavors like orange and “mixed fruits”) and desserts like chocolate-dipped profiteroles and a variation on muhallebi, a lightly spiced rice custard typically made with simmering milk but which Sanli speeds up by using cream.

Better yet: şekerpare, cookies made from almond flour dipped in orange-scented syrup.

In addition to serving the same drinks and desserts that can also be found at the cafe, the pop-up has recently added a line of skewers available only on Sunday afternoons. Reddish flakes of Aleppo pepper are visible on the adana skewers, a wavy-shaped combination of minced meat and lamb; the skewers are threaded with chunks of lamb or chicken. Kahramanoğlu tends the grill, meat juices dripping onto the binchotan charcoal and clouds of smoke sometimes enveloping him.

Fire-roasted peppers in the Lokl Haus oven.

Pop-up doner kebab cooked on a vertical rotisserie.

Senem Sanli, right, owner of Lokl Haus coffee shop in Santa Monica, prepares dishes with chef Hüsnü Kahramanoğlu.

Elsewhere around the city we have similarly gorgeous styles of these kebabs, whose appeal reaches across vast swaths of continents and cultures: at Mini Kabob in Glendale, Taste of Tehran in Westwood, and Saffy’s in East Hollywood, for starters. Lokl Haus Kitchen’s efforts are compelling, particularly for the complete composition: The kebabs arrive on platters piled high with earthy bulgur pilav, a crisp onion salad, grilled tomatoes and peppers straight from the market, and squares of freshly baked pide.

The dishes are juicy and smoky, but I recommend you go first on a Wednesday or Saturday to try the döner kebab. Among Sanli’s signature delicacies and breakfasts are the balanced salads, marinated and grilled meats, and countless vegetable dishes that only begin to define Turkish cuisine. They make me want to try more.