We have all heard of cursed restaurant locations: those ill-starred carbuncles where some unfortunate combination of eccentric architecture, thin footfall and the bad juju of a disturbed Saxon burial ground dooms any prospective business to failure. Well, we begin this sparkling new year on the top floor of Kingly Court, at what may well be London’s most unexpectedly charmed site. First, this hidden little corner berth was home to the blistering, home-style cooking of Asma Khan’s original Darjeeling Express. Next came the politically purposeful, gently modernised Middle Eastern of Imad’s Syrian Kitchen.
And now, arguably most impressively of all, here is Donia: a contemporary Filipino restaurant where the cooking level is so high and the flavours have such ripping, multi-layered potency, that a meal here can feel like a prolonged loop-the-loop of pure, unbridled pleasure. Partly this is the innate vitality and eclecticism of Filipino food. But, mostly, it is the palpable professionalism, courageousness and creativity of key founders Omar Shah and Florence Mae Maglanoc (architects of Kentish Town’s Mamasons and an ever-mushrooming parent empire called the Maginhawa Group).
