HARDLY HAS Selin Kiazim, above, started to build a reputation at a newish restaurant in Hackney than she reveals she is leaving.

Foodies have until April 2014 to sample her dishes at Trip, a stylishly appointed railway-arch restaurant near the bridge over the Regent’s Canal at Haggerston, before she leaves, with her partner, Victoria McDowall, to start her own venture.

She told Loving Dalston today that she hopes to open a meze place of about 30 covers in Clerkenwell or Shoreditch this year. “My time here was a residency,” added Kiazim, who was head chef at a top Covent Garden restaurant.

At Trip she devised a contemporary Turkish menu, fusing Turkish Cypriot-inherited cooking with other Mediterranean styles. It certainly impressed Giles Coren, London’s most amusing restaurant reviewer, who scored it well on taste and on his possibly unique sustainability rating, see right. Another star chef will not be sought.  

Trip is more than a restaurant. Part of the privately funded Trip Space Projects, it is also a spacious venue for “contemporary movement, devised theatre and dining experiences”. (From the press release, obviously.)

David Altheer 010314

* Trip Kitchen and Bar, 339 Acton Mews, Haggerston E8 4EA. No phone number for booking. Loving Dalston snacked (and paid, even the “optional” service charge) at Trip with someone who knows food. Her verdict: delicately cooked.

* Emboldened underscored words in most cases indicate a hyperlink, a reader service rare among websites. If a link does not work, it is probably because the site to which the URL refers has not been maintained.