The most recent additions to London’s restaurant scene have plenty to offer – from Palestinian culinary history on a plate and a slice of the American East Coast to a tasting menu with a twist and ramen worth writing home about. Here’s Spectator Life‘s guide to the best new openings to try now – and three more to look out for later in the year.
Four to book now
Akub, Notting Hill
It’s funny how comfort food doesn’t need to be familiar to be instantly recognisable. You may not have grown up eating Palestinian chicken musakhan, but when you taste Chef Fadi Kattan’s version there’s sense of home that’s unmistakable. The chicken is stripped from the bone, seasoned liberally with citrussy sumac and pressed into a dome of shatteringly thin bread. It goes fantastically with a bowl of aromatic, porridge-like freekeh risotto.
Right from the off, the cooking at Akub feels confident and charming. The small plates radiate personality, with options such as fava beans, well-braised with tomato and garlic; an earthy moutabal flecked with nutty red lentils; and a tart Nabulsi cheese pebble-dashed with nigella seeds and deep, serious olive oil.
The emphasis on comfort doesn’t mean that the food at Akub lacks elegance, though. The dish of skate wing in vine leaves on yoghurt marbled with dill, parsley and mint is delicate and joyful. It’s also well worth sampling the mansaf – fragrant rice and braised lamb rolled into little parcels of pastry and floated on a creamy sauce made with intensely fermented jameed. This dried strained yoghurt has been a part of life for Palestinian Bedouins for generations. Chef Fadi and his team make it fresh here in Notting Hill, with milk from the south of England.
A photogenic baba, rich with cardamom and rose petals, makes an excellent way to close out the meal. Another artisanal Arak or a powerful Arabic coffee and you’ll be ready, if somewhat reluctant, to step out of the homely dining room and back to reality. A genuinely great addition to the London restaurant scene.
Small plates and snacks £3-13, mains £14-29, desserts £9; wines start at £28.
Humble Chicken 2.0, Soho
Chef Angelo Sato raised eyebrows when he announced he would be changing the offering at his modish yakitori-ya. The Frith Street counter joint was beloved for its precisely butchered skewers of chicken skin, fat, flesh and offal all grilled over white-hot coals. Why rethink something so obviously perfect? But Sato had something more ambitious in mind.
The second incarnation of Humble Chicken fields a serious tasting menu – eight courses, plus snacks and desserts – that brings a dazzling level of technique to bear and avoids taking itself too seriously. There’s a little bao shaped like a cartoon piglet and stacked with a trotter croquette, nose-tingling mustard, and a crispy quail’s egg. The yakitori makes a guest appearance in the form of a lightly charred achilles, cut from the lower thigh, that proves excellent company for a bowl of rich, fatty chicken rice.
About halfway through proceedings you’re served a loaf of sweet, airy shokupan (Japanese milk bread) and a little disc of butter. It’s pretty, like French patisserie, and on inspection you realise the butter is actually a multi-layered confection of chicken liver parfait, fermented red cabbage and sesame. The whole thing is slightly too rich, which is fine because sometimes slightly too rich is exactly the right amount. And anyway, it’s immediately followed by a smart dish of lightly cured mackerel in a delicate gazpacho of citrus and shiso. Your palate is then clean and you’re on to grilled seabass, short rib ssam, and beyond.
The sequence of dishes is well-handled throughout: chef knows how to push his diners’ buttons and when to hit you with the right combinations of umami, spice, crunch, fattiness and freshness. At this price, in this postcode, it’s hard to imagine anything better. Humble Chicken is dead; long live Humble Chicken.
Tasting menu £115; sake by the glass from £7.50, cocktails from £12.
Saltie Girl, Mayfair
This American import arrived in London just as we Brits decided that tinned seafood wasn’t only for eating during the Blitz and is actually a delicacy. This is something our cousins in Spain, Portugal and many other places besides have known forever, of course. Your Andalusian friend would think nothing of spending a day’s wages on a very good tin of sardines and a glass of white wine to keep them company. Thanks to Saltie Girl’s new outpost in Mayfair, you can do the same.
Prop up the bar there and you’ll have a whole library of preserved specimens to choose from, including novel and excellent-quality preparations of tuna, mackerel and (rightly) pricey cockles and clams. These come served on a board with all the bread, salt, butter, lemons, sauces and other accoutrements you could want. There is probably more stuff than you really need – but it’s fun to have nonetheless.
Once you’ve liberated a few of the world’s fanciest shellfish from their tins, and maybe stopped by the oyster or caviar menus, there’s the a la carte to contend with. The standard of fish cookery here is strong: there’s a flawless roasted monkfish tail served confidently with oil and parsley; a dish of crunchy, soft, sweet tempura langoustines so perfect they’re worth the trip alone; and the alarmingly buttery but definitely delicious lobster roll. This fancified nod to Saltie’s Bostonian origins doesn’t much resemble New England’s quotidianly charming lobster salad on a hotdog bun, but no one is complaining.
Unfortunately, there is the odd misstep here and there. The Instagrammable caviar martini is tepid where you want it to be a bracing counterpoint to the generously caviared olives. A plate of tuna tartare is beautifully prepared and then absolutely carpet-bombed with sweet paprika. But then this glitzy slice of Americana isn’t necessarily meant to be subtle. And when it’s on point, it is excellent.
Tins £12-£52, small plates from £12, larger plates from £25; martini with caviar on it £35, wines from £45.
Supa Ya Ramen, Peckham
A second outpost of the ‘traditionally inauthentic’ noodle shop has arrived on Rye Lane, filling a gap on the high street (and in our hearts) left by the dearly departed Taco Queen. Luke Findlay (formerly of Nopi) started this project with a supper club and a series of high-profile pop-ups before settling in his first permanent location in Dalston. This south of the river expansion sees the team turning out the intensely flavoursome bowls of ramen that made Supa Ya such a hit back east with a few new treats to keep things fresh.
The menu is like a mixtape of disparate influences and flavour combinations, all of which are deployed to great effect. There’s a mezze-ish whipped tofu seasoned to resemble an impossibly light hummus, complete with flatbreads and a sharp winter tomato dressing. Then you have a wedge salad heaped with fermented chilli and sesame and even a Blooming Onion that could come right out of American fast-casual oddity Outback Steakhouse – improved here with kewpie mayo and nashi pear hot sauce.
Then there’s the ramen. The Cumberland sausage tantanmen sums up the kind of culinary magpie-ing that makes Findlay such a great chef. The superbly spicy broth is topped with a rubble of coarse pork sausage that vibrates with chilli and numbing Szechuan pepper. It’s a bit like a really saucy dan dan noodle. If you’ve had a couple of pints, or maybe did last night, this sort of cooking could very well save your life.
Also excellent are the vegetarian cheese and cabbage bowl – served with drifts of parmesan and nutty flecks of crispy garlic – and the frankly bonkers cheeseburger mazesoba, which feels like a continuation of the salt beef-based Ruben Ramen that was such a hit in Dalston. The noodles, still house made, are substantial and wholesome with the just the right amount of bounce and resistance.
Sitting nicely at the nexus of fun, filling and good value for money, it’s no wonder the place has been packed out since it opened. Either sneak in early or book ahead, it’s not going to get quiet in there any time soon.
Three openings to look out for
- Sonora Taqueria, seen last on Netil Market in Hackney, will open its first permanent location in Stoke Newington later this year. Excellent news as Michelle Salazar de la Rocha and Sam Napier offer a shining light in London’s fairly lukewarm taco scene.
- Chef and author Cynthia Shanmugalingam is set to open Rambutan on Stoney Street, serving the food of the Sri Lankan diaspora to hungry Borough Marketers. If her 2022 cookbook – also called Rambutan – is anything to go by, they’ll be in for a treat.
- Adejoké Bakare is looking for new premises following the unexpected closure of her acclaimed Brixton restaurant Chishuru late last year. While fans of her smart but tender West African food wait for Chishuru 2, you can find Joké cooking at Carousel in Fitzrovia from 21 to 25 February.
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