MLK Deli

Myra Karakelle’s mother is from Uzbekistan, her father is Afghani and her husband is Turkish. Karakelle wanted to show off those region’s lesser-known cuisines, at first via a lockdown cooking Instagram account, called Myra’s Little Kitchen. When her recipes began to spread beyond her friends and family to a wider audience, she started to dream about turning the online account into a bricks-and-mortar reality.

Enter MLK, where seven or so sandwiches are the vehicle for Karakelle’s home-style cooking. Highlights include the Rubenesque Risky Brisket, stuffed with fall-apart pastrami inspired by a research trip to New York’s famous Katz’s Deli. The Italian-American-style MLK Sando is loaded with mortadella, turkey ham, Wagyu salami, pecorino and provolone on ciabatta. All meat here is halal – a rarity for things like brisket and mortadella.

Elsewhere, Karakelle has adapted two of her favourite family recipes for the menu: Uzbek-style chicken thighs with Algerian sauce stars in the chicken sanga, and Karakelle’s mum’s lamb kofta recipe is used for the meatball sub.