Cyrus The Great

Well this place looks the part but that’s about it. Being a person who doesn’t eat meat, there is bugger all to eat on the menu. Started with garlic yogurt, nice and creamy but no garlic, and a salad with a very strange lemon dressing. Next we had a fish kebab, very dry and tasteless, with only plain boiled rice. The vegetable casserole was ok but there wasn’t much of it. It looked like an accompaniment to a meat dish. We couldn’t have the Persian dessert, as they didn’t have any that night, or coffee because no one could make it. Maybe it’s better on a Saturday night, but I won’t be back to find out.

Location, location, location… and this doesn’t have it.
This restaurant is tucked away below, under and around the back of a retail complex in Castlecrag that also happens to be at the end of the street my mum lives in. Over the last 20 years I’ve seen 4 or 5 different restaurants come and go, and I feel for them because they can be the best places in the world, but nobody knows they’re there and there’s no foot traffic.
The kit-​out at Cyrus is terrific, it’s cozy and classy all at once, transporting you right back to Persia (assuming that you’ve, y’know, been there before. Or hell, maybe you’ve just seen Aladdin about a hundred times). The menu is heavy on delicious, spiced lamb and beef shish kebabs, great mounds of fragrant rice, char-​grilled chilli, minted yoghurts, and lots of eggplant dishes.
I wasn’t a giant fan of the pickled vegetables for entrée — quite vinegary — but that probably says more about my palate than the dish itself. The lamb kebab was unreal, confirming my suspicions that I am indeed a Meat Man. Always was, always will be. Take that statement as you will.