Brand-new Turkish restaurant opens its doors in Chichester

Taking over the former GBK site in Chichester Gate, the new business is kitted out with a fully-stocked bar and a huge pizza oven, shipped over from Turkey.

The restaurant owner, Zulfukar Orak, from Havant, has sold his fish and chip shop in Havant to open a restaurant in a city he loves.

“I have been over here for the past 20 years and I always come to Chichester on weekends — I love Chichester, it’s a beautiful place. Back home in Turkey we had a restaurant and we are very excited about what’s coming. With a new business always comes new adventures and it is always exciting.

"Everything we sell we make ourselves and prepared fresh, and the bread we prepare here and it goes into the oven ready for every order. I don’t even have a freezer in the shop, nothing comes from frozen.”

Gourmet Burger Kitchen shut its doors during the pandemic, and the well-placed site has been empty ever since.

Turning the site around hasn’t been easy.

Zulfukar, with help from his wife and a close friend, refurbished the restaurant entirely without any outside help, including the placing of a huge pizza often which was picked out in Turkey and shipped over to Chichester.

After four months of working on the interior, he said he is delighted to have the place up-and-running and to have opened in the city today.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing all the people in the city and welcoming them and we’ll do our best to give them the best food.”

The restaurant is dedicated to serving pides, a traditional Turkish pizza, but has a broad menu which caters to meat-lovers, vegetarians and vegans alike.

The restaurant is described by Zulfukar: “Piddes is a new restaurant in Chichester, producing fresh, homemade wood-fired Turkish pides; An anatolian oval-shaped pizza-style dish dating back thousands of years using fresh in-house dough with healthy toppings and baked in a traditional ceramic oven.”

You can find out more about the restaurant on its Facebook page here.