Menuwatch: Zahter, Carnaby Street, London

A showcase for Istanbulite cuisine, Zahter's menu of sharing dishes are influenced by ancient recipes and cooking methods, but given a modern twist from Muslu's experience working at Soho House in Istanbul before moving to Shoreditch House in London. From here she became head chef of Ottolenghi Spitalfields after a successful residency at Carousel.

The 85-cover restaurant, an impressive Victorian building and located on a corner site just off Carnaby Street, took Muslu three years to find. After finally opening in early December last year, she has 10 chefs in the kitchen including Muslu herself, while her sister Yasemin Efe looks after front of house.

As you walk into the restaurant, you immediately see the charcoal grill and wood oven – no gas or electric here, the entire menu is cooked over flame, she tells me. "It's all about the flavour." Take the pide bread as an example – sat at the kitchen counter you watch the dough being shaped by hand and put into the 280-degree wood oven for a few minutes until the crust is crispy, but the top is still fluffy and pillowy, and steam erupts as you tear it apart to dip into the accompanying fresh zahter oil.

Muslu is very strict on cooking seasonally to get the most intense flavour out of her ingredients, preferring to cook with fresh herbs rather than dried, while the influence of her time at Ottolenghi, unsurprisingly, sees a spotlight on vegetables, with the majority of her cold mezzes being presented as vegan dishes.

The star of the show is the highly instagrammable artichoke dish, Enginar Dolmasi. Muslu serves the artichoke cold, stuffing it with rice which is infused with olive oil, cinnamon, allspice, fresh herbs, spring onions and roasted almonds. "And then a squeeze of lemon juice balances the sweetness from the cinnamon," she explains. "For my family, we eat artichokes every single day in the summertime. Artichokes are often stuffed with rice and lamb in Turkey, but I make this vegan which I think makes it a little more earthy and pure in taste. In my opinion the lamb kills off the delicate flavour and the freshness of the artichoke."

Antep Kuru Dolma – freekeh, bulgur-stuffed dried Antep peppers – is another vegan mezze dish, using Antep peppers which are grown in south-eastern Turkey and sun-dried to preserve for the winter months. "You soften the peppers in hot water and then, usually, they are stuffed with meat, but for this dish I love freekeh and bulgur which takes on the pepper paste which I make from fresh mint, onions, sumac and sumac paste, which I buy from Turkey and bring back with me. Every flavour goes into the freekeh and we stuff the peppers with it before cooking low and slow."

New to the menu is a dish of lamb hearts – Kuzu Yuregi (£21) – which is served as one of the larger main platters. A whole heart is marinated with cumin, smoked paprika, crushed garlic and olive oil overnight. "We charcoal it until it is cooked medium then slice it very thinly and serve it with pomegranate molasses, home-smoked olive oil and smoked paprika. The whole thing is sat on top of a salad of tomato, cucumber, chilli, lime, lemon, fresh mint, parsley and dill – it's quite a delicacy and melts in your mouth."

When it comes to desserts, you can choose between Firin Sutlac – wood oven burnt rice pudding with hazelnuts – or baklava. But with Jay Rayner describing Muslu's baklava as "quite simply the best baklava I have ever eaten", it's not really a difficult choice. Muslu says her secret is down to her love of pistachios. "I don't like very sweet desserts, but I love textures and bitterness and crunchiness," she says. The traditional baklava from Turkey is made with walnuts, so Muslu's addition of pistachio gives a slight sweetness, making up for her going easy on the sugar syrup, while the addition of a quenelle of clotted cream and a scattering of rose petals "puts me in the heavens", she says.

30-32 Foubert's Place, London W1F 7PS

zahter.co.uk