Itsu weird.

Lunch.

Ok Wasabi Christmas special you have a contender! Welcome the Itsu “Eat beautiful Hummous flatbread”. This lunch choice is not excellent. In fact, the fact that I am now stuck with five pounds worth of regret on my desk saddens me.

I didn’t think you could really go wrong with hummous and flatbread. Evidently, I was mistaken. They’ve added some salad on to the hummous. Awesome! Nice touch! Except salad really translates as very long pieces of stringy rocket, the type that when you eat them the hang out of the side of your mouth and you have to make that apologetic face to colleagues as you suck in the greens like you would spaghetti, flicking hummous and sauce all over the shop.

Initially I only logged onto my wordpress blog to make the point that this hummous wrap is impossible to eat and that it is the nemesis of any desk worker. Especially when trying to hack at lumps of the wrap with Itsu’s flimsy cutlery.

Then you dig a little deeper into the mound of hummous and there are edamame beans. Why? What do edamame beans have to do with hummous? I’m sorry, is this fusion lunch food?

Want to know what’s worse? Sure you do. Someone has to warn you. They’ve added a sauce. No, me neither. No idea why you need a sauce with a hummous flatbread unless you’ve got something to hide. In this case, the edamame beans and the weirdly inconvenient wrap that’s not a wrap but a class A hassle. The sauce is bright green. I didn’t notice this when I bought it, but as soon as I did I was hooked. You don’t give somebody a luminous green sauce with a hummous wrap and not experiment. It would be mint, obviously. Everybody pairs mint with hummous. It’s very middle eastern. Maybe this would be a sensible step to cover their edaame mistake. They were probably embarassed by adding the beans. “Oh it’s Phil’s idea. He’s been here for ages. He has a wife and kids to support. Oh, we’ll give him the edamame beans. I know sounds horrific but it’s the first idea he’s had in months and we can’t fire him before christmas. Ok then, well develop something to disguise the idea then. Ok, brilliant, bye!”

And so they designed a lurid green coconut coriander lemon sauce to drizzle over the hummous, the floppy rocket and the wrap that can’t be wrapped. It was an expensive mistake and I feel it is my duty to alert others. Stick with the Potsu.

Yalla Yalla-still pretty tasty

The owners of the restaurant clearly anticipated the speed at which their waitresses would work when they named their London-based mini chain Yalla Yalla-in arabic this means hurry up! The food takes a while to arrive, and the waitresses eye customers up lazily. There is no anticipation of what the customer might need. We sat without menus for several minutes only to be brought a bill; another time when we wanted the bill the staff seemed to flick their heads away whenever we tried to catch their eye. “Yalla yalla” is certainly what I’ve wanted to cry many a time, but luckily, the food is almost always worth it.

A startlingly good option for vegetarians, Yalla Yalla is one of those perpetually popular Soho institutions that appeals to vegans, meat-eaters, students and the wealthy. 

Yalla Yalla is based on Beirut streetfood; expect houmous, falafels and lots of parsley. What’s so wonderful about Yalla Yalla is that all the staples are elevated, making even a plate of humble humous a delight to mop up with the free rounds of flatbread which accompany the meal. 

A smoky baba-ghanoush is scattered with sweet red pomegranate seeds and a rich, top-quality olive oil is drizzled generously on top. The humous is also accompanied by the beautifully savoury oil and has a refreshing layer of tangy, parsley leaves. 

Even the falafels arrive with slices of red onion: the sweet sesame balls contrast beautifully with the sour onion slices.

However, the waitresses aren’t the friendliest. They look harassed and even at 8.30pm, want us out. A queue is forming outside, they say. They clear our plates before we’ve quite finished picking the pomegranate seeds out of the bowls and sucking the flesh off them. 

My companion mentioned how wonderful and crisp the halloumi was: “It lacked the chewiness, the slipperiness that you come to expect with halloumi.”

Best of all, the meal finished with a glass of apple, mint and ginger lemonade. It was a super, green palate-cleanser and one that back in July I had found myself craving in the hot weather.

Some places lose their appeal a few years after they open, but Yalla Yalla has only grown in interest for me. It is a light, refreshing meal set in a wonderfully bustling, if slightly chaotic small restaurant. 

 

Read other reviews here-to summarise, I’d go with the simpler items on the menu as they hit the spot far better than the elaborate, meaty dishes seem to. Another win for the veggies among us!

Terrible (The Telegraph)

 Mediocre (Time Out)

 Good (London Eater 

Abu Zaad-Damascus cafe in the heart of Shepherd’s Bush Market

If you Google ‘best Middle Eastern restaurant cheap London’ at some point in the listings, Abu Zaad will appear. It has immensely high ratings by nearly every punter (with the exception of one irate customer who bemoans their lack of general niceness). Not wanting to tread against the grain too much, I’ll start with the positives.

It looks authentic enough. Al Jazeera is on television on a muted television screen, which lends a novel way of enjoying Damascene food: watching the waiter’s city of origin getting bombed to smithereens. Different, but helped to put my London life into perspective, which I suppose is an ethical bonus, but maybe not what you really want whilst trying to enjoy falafel.

The restaurant was, in itself, an interesting anthropological study. In the front area, non-Muslims were seated on pleasant tables with a full view of busy Uxbridge Road outside. When I went to the bathroom however, I passed a middle room full of Muslim families and the very backroom, hidden away from the prying eyes of the London street, were tables that consisted solely of women wearing niqaab. On a separate point, the air-conditioning was much better in the backroom too.

The décor was Syrian-a usual handful of old pottery and a beautifully tiled ceiling and walls made the dining experience feel ‘Middle Eastern’. But it was for the food that I had come here. Reams of reviews describe the food here as being ‘the best in London’ or at the very worst ‘a thoroughly decent Syrian restaurant’.

Now, maybe they just didn’t like us. Maybe they took offence to me because I double-checked that the moussaka didn’t have any dairy in it-some of the moussakas I’ve had pre-dairy allergy have been smothered in mozzarella for no real reason other than it seems Mediterranean. My boyfriend ordered lamb with okra, and we shared a plate of falafel. The vegetarian and even vegan options on the menu were adequate. There was cold moussaka for £3 compared to my £6 main, there was tabouleh there were spinach pastry and pine nut bites which looked unbelievable: I would have devoured platefuls had they not been unsuitable for coeliacs. My advice would be to go armed with your own knowledge, as the idea of having an allergy to anything seemed alien to the waiters.

The falafel were fine if a little oily, and unlike some of the better kind, were dry. It was as though they had make the falafel from a packet of falafel mix. As I had falafel rather than rice or bread to accompany my meal, I appreciated the difference in texture from the wet tomato, and the flavour was strong and enjoyable.

My moussaka when it arrived, was redolent of microwave. Most parts were stone cold, while other bits burnt my tongue. A thin layer of filmy grease had gathered on top. They hadn’t even bothered to stir it. I was unimpressed.

However, the aubergine had been grilled (sometime earlier in the day, or perhaps last week) which gave the stew a smoky, interesting taste. I enjoyed the flavours, although there was far too much tomato. I’ve never seen a moussaka quite like it, but it was a tasty-enough, vegan, gluten free stew. The aubergine melted in my mouth and was tender. Accompanying the smoky aubergine were strips of wire-thin red pepper and a smattering of chick-peas.

My boyfriend tried mine and said that it tasted extremely similar to his, except that his had lumps of lamb in it rather than aubergine. We both agreed that they had probably been quickly whizzed through a microwave and that the flavours were moreish, but it probably didn’t deserve the glowing reputation that every citizen of London seems to bestow upon it.

My most glowing praise of this place is that it’s cheap. You can fill your tummies from £5, and as I have today, still have enough left to take it to work and eat it at lunch for leftovers. In my opinion, it isn’t worth the trek west, but if you live or work around Shepherd’s Bush or Hammersmith, it might be worth popping in. You might have more luck than we did.

Slug and Lettuce

Living in central London is like asking somebody to sporadically take your wallet and empty it into the gutter. Everything is unbelievably expensive. So it’s reassuring to fall into a Slug and Lettuce and know that, even if you push the boat out, the bill won’t exceed more than a tenner because the food is standardised gastro-pub fare. Slug and Lettuce describes itself as a ‘high end, premium venue’. I wouldn’t go that far.

The Slug and Lettuce in Artillery Row, Victoria was half empty. Exhausted looking politicians slouched on the leather couches, waving their arms wearily at their companions, and a couple of women were having a catch-up chat over a half empty bottle of red.

Vegetarians have come to expect more and more from places like Slug and Lettuce and Weatherspoon’s joints. There’s a vast selection, from lasagne to Hummus and Flatbreads. Vegans are less well catered for. New to vegan living, I stared hungrily at the goats cheese flatbread, before resigning myself to the food that contained hummus. It seems to be the Slug and Lettuce’s top vegan option. And not all of it is suitable.

The FLT Wrap (Falafel, lettuce and tomato) comes with creme fraiche, but the lovely waitress told me that I’d be able to get that removed and have a vegan wrap. Sick to my back teeth of falafel and hummus (even though it’s still one of my all time favourites), I opted for the Penne Arabiata.

This is a meal I call ‘child’s food’. It’s pretty much pasta and tomato sauce with a hint of chilli. It even comes with garlic bread. Who still thinks that double carbs are a good idea? Luckily they were drenched in garlic butter so I had to give it a miss.

The pasta was watery and the sauce was watery and had no other flavours in it other than chilli. Arabiata needs a rich, thick tomato sauce to carry the meal through. Vegetarians and vegans are trying to ethically save the world! We need more to sustain us than flimsy shreds of pasta and some bland tomato puree.

That said, Slug and Lettuce, with its standardised food and relatively cheap menu provides a unremarkable meal for vegans and vegetarians alike looking to eat out with omnivores. A special mention to the staff at this point as the waitress went and got the allergy spreadsheet and showed me what items were edible for me.

3/5 for Vegan selection