TL;DR - Great food, but we had a poor experience.
Anatolian Grill is always busy whenever you go past so we decided to find out what all the fuss was about. It may not be in the most attractive of locations on Bury New Road, but the interior is bright, modern and welcoming. We arrived on a Saturday night and it was absolutely heaving - good job we'd booked a table in advance!
We were seated fairly promptly and our orders taken. And then the wait began... it must have been about 30 minutes at the very least and our waitress came and apologised for the delay. We got some free nibbles (olives and feta) which were nice, but by the time our starters came we'd been waiting for over an hour. We then had another long wait for our main course which came with lots of apologies (apparently one of the chefs was off sick) and the offer of a free drink or dessert.
The food itself was very good indeed. I had some nice feta parcels to start, Tom had calamari and Sparky had falafel. For mains I had a really delicious moussaka, Tom had a "sizzler" (which was sizzling like crazy when it arrived!) and mark had a lamb and chicken dish with rice. All very authentic, all very tasty.
I've debated whether or not to award 3 or 4 stars here. Our waitress was very friendly and apologetic, but at the end of the day we sat down at 8.15pm and didn't get our main course until it was nearly 10pm. A couple of other rough edges - like the fact the lock on the gents' toilet door didn't work - mean I've gone with 3 rather than 4. read more