Some developers would rip the soul out of a 1930s banking hall, but Kinz, a new all-day Lebanese brasserie housed in a former Lloyds Bank in Notting Hill, instead makes a feature of its chunky vault door. Where W11 residents once kept their cash, diners can now take a seat and sip Lebanese wine from the Bekaa valley. After all, what visit to the bank wouldn’t be improved by a cold glass of Chateau Musar Jeune?
This triple-height room with mezzanine seating is a very different proposition from all those tiny, homespun Lebanese restaurants typically anchored around Edgware Road since the 1970s. Kinz may offer kibbeh nayyeh (finely minced raw lamb and beef with bulgur, spices and pine nuts), shish barak (tiny lamb and herb dumplings in yoghurt sauce) and warak enab (lamb-stuffed vine leaves and baby courgettes), as do many places in pockets across west London, but there is something altogether more cinematic about this elegant setting.
