The new Bubala in Soho has a menu so deliciously worded and branding so smoothly positioned that my lunch guest was for some time quite unaware she was in a meat-free restaurant. She loves modern Middle Eastern food, and was well into the idea of fancy hummus, braised hispi cabbage and charred oyster mushrooms on skewers. It was only after the third time she attempted to add “perhaps a chicken dish” to our order that the penny finally dropped. “There is no chicken,” I revealed. Sometimes, when springing vegetarian food on friends, my tactic is subterfuge: softly, softly I shall lure you into my world of silken tofu and seitan-worship. Lunch doesn’t always need to have once had a face to be fabulous.
Thankfully, at Bubala, you can pacify a carnivore with the corn ribs, sticky with black garlic pilpelchuma, and warm challah to drag greedily through bowls of baba ganoush made glossy with curry leaf oil and pine nuts. Bubala Soho is this outfit’s second incarnation, after Helen Graham and Marc Summers made a successful start in Spitalfields some three years ago, when I heard only good things about this all-day, plant-based, rather elegant spot that’s clearly influenced by the likes of Ottolenghi and Moro.
