Portsmouth Recommended Eats: Family-run Agora in Southsea offers mouth-watering freshly made Turkish cuisine

Stepping into Agora, located in Clarendon Road, Southsea, customers are immediately greeted with a warm and welcoming eatery. The decor is far cry from the city with colourful tiles adorning the walls and a beautiful open kitchen - which allows guests to watch their food being cooked from scratch.

From the traditional furnishings to the authentic food - everything about Agora represents the Greek and Turkish heritage of its owners who have delicately created something special in the city.

Yilmaz Sener, the owner of Agora, said: "When I came to the city, I started with takeaways and at the time I noticed that wasn't good enough because only wanted a few things like the kebabs - so I decided to open a rich kitchen to the public.

"This is not just my business, it's my personality and I believe that if you do something you should do the right thing for you and if you are running a business just for money, it's not good enough.

"It's my life and my family's life, it's not just business, it's our life and you we care about it - whatever kind of job you do you have to do your best."

The restaurant has 76 dishes on its menu including mezze, kebabs, tzatziki, saganaki and much more - and it has proved popular amongst locals. Agora has a Google rating of 4.6 and a Tripadvisor rating of 4.5.

Dilan, Yilmaz's daughter, said: "Everything we serve at Agora is homemade - quite literally, what we have at home, we have at the restaurant. All of the ingredients used - everything is imported from Turkey, it's all from Turkish brands so all of the ingredients from the herbs to the tomato paste - everything - the oils - it's all authentic.

"The quality of food is unbelievable and that is why we have been consistently busy, not only our regulars, but newcomers as well - the flavours here are not even comparable to the other Turkish restaurants.

"We put so much effort into everything and it's all homemade fresh food - we have 76 dishes on our menu and a lot of people say 'how can you keep up with it?' but the reason why we have so many dishes is because we don't do anything which is frozen or microwaved - everything is fresh quality so we make it daily - everything our mezzes, our kebabs are cooked on a charcoal grill in front of our customers.

"Everything is made daily and fresh and that's why we stand out."

For more information about Agora, click here.