Neighbourhood gem: Carmel
(Picture: Matt Writtle)It was the flatbread that jerked me to attention. Before that, I had looked around at the lunchtime scene in Carmel — a new, Levant-inspired Queen’s Park spot from the Berber & Q team — and told myself I was in for a pleasant enough afternoon of familiar, Ottolenghian standards. But then it landed on the table: a glossy, puffed dome, heaped with zhoug-trickled wild mushrooms and manouri cheese, spotted with angry, oven-blackened bubbles and looking vaguely like a fire damaged blowfish. A slice went in my mouth — light and garlicky and creamy, with a long, lusciously complex sourdough finish — and I was rendered speechless.
Though it isn’t categorised as such, it may be some of the very best pizza in the city. And the unexpectedness of that gets to the heart of what makes this all-day operation — named after the Hebrew word for “vineyard”, opened late last year, and already ripening nicely under the guidance of NW6-based chef-owner Josh Katz — such a subtly potent, magical little endeavour.
