Late last month, Impala drove into Soho already flaming hot in the hype stakes: this was a sizzling booking to brag about even before executive chef and co-founder Meedu Saad had turned on the stoves. Impala, after all, is a Super 8 restaurant, the group that has, among others, Tomos Parry’s Brat in Shoreditch, which has been constantly, unfalteringly brilliant since 2018. It also runs Parry’s second baby, Mountain, which is likewise wonderful; sometimes weird, yes, but always wonderful. Long before that, back in 2016, they opened Kiln, the famed live-fire Thai counter hangout that cheffy boys in beanies have tried and failed to emulate all over Britain, while Super 8’s beginnings were with the boundary-pushing and much-loved Smoking Goat. That is nothing less than a litany of solid-gold bangers, and now they’ve unleashed Impala by Saad, the former head chef at Kiln.
In any normal restaurant review, it would have been common to have by now established what type of food Impala actually cooks – north African? Middle Eastern? Mediterranean? British?, etc – but in this odd, dreamy and defiantly dark nook in Soho (every single one of us in the room, even those with perfect vision, had our iPhone torches on just to read the menu), narrowing down its origin story is not quite that simple. “Bird’s tongue pasta braised with spiced oxtail?” someone asked over the loud jazz. “Molokhia, braised jute leaf and shoulder of cull yaw sheep?” queried someone else. It went on: aish baladi? Ftira? “Bird’s tongue pasta is the Egyptian name for orzo,” I ventured, adding that I thought molokhia might be a bit like spinach, but never have I been more ready for a server to turn up and ask: “Guys, may I explain the menu?”
We choose a beef tartare with a smoky, sweet Tunisian harissa and crunchy chunks of deep-fried bread as brittle as pork crackling. We scoop honey bread through an insanely good mush of pounded white beans topped with chunks of pungent bottarga. There are rustic pillows of that aish baladi, an Egyptian wholegrain bread that here comes with a fresh, rich harissa paste, and langoustine kibbeh and sun-dried wheat all wrapped in a neat perilla leaf cone.
Saad’s new restaurant feels very much like a mesh of influences: there are nods to childhood trips to his Egyptian dad’s homeland, hat tips to the Turkish-Cypriot cooking of Green Lanes in north London, and definite undertones of Kiln’s take-me-or-leave-me rawness – notably in robust, non-mass-market dishes made with the likes of nettles or garum, and in rough, dry tangles of fattoush salad with pistachios and Greek anthotyros cheese. Suppliers include a serious-sounding bunch of Welsh farmers, Spanish citrus growers, Cretan olive oil producers and Cornish fisherfolk, all listed on the website as if they were movie stars. The nerdily chosen wine list ranges from France (traditional pouilly-fuissé!) to Slovakian orange wines and Moroccan reds, while the cocktail list offers banana rum punch, bathtime martinis and Long Island iced teas.
We order monkfish wrapped in grape leaves and cooked succulently over coals, as well as grilled short rib infused with rosemary and made fiery by three varieties of black pepper; artichokes come with those aforementioned nettles and a pile of pale, balm-like sheep’s cheese. This food is extraordinary and, more than that, it is inimitable, not least because it feels as if the menu is essentially a 3D printout of Saad’s mind. I’d go back tomorrow and the next day just out of sheer curiosity to see what this team comes up with next.
Impala is like no restaurant I’ve ever been to, but at the same time it somehow has echoes of almost all of them. It is a long-ago holiday in Tunisia mixed with late-night dinners on the boundaries of Stoke Newington, complete with throwbacks to the cocktails at the weird, industrial-chic Alphabet Bar back in 90s Beak Street and sprinklings of London’s Turkish-Cypriot scene.
Impala left me punch-drunk with memories, and wondering if this hazy blend of styles, cuisines and shabby-chic luxury might actually be the future. If that all sounds a bit bloody much, you’re right, it is. Impala is shamelessly, brilliantly too much. Or at least it is right up to the dessert offering, which is where all the wild excess stops. It lists just one option, a like-it-or-lump it, £12 slice of riotous, salty-sweet date and pistachio custard tart – and no, they won’t be faffing about making sorbet just to fill the empty space on the menu. And I respect that fully. I’ve seen the next era of restaurants, and it’s weird, jumbled, dark, unapologetic and delicious.
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Impala 13-14 Dean Street, London W1 (no phone). Open Mon-Sat, lunch noon-3pm, dinner 5-10.30pm. From about £65 a head, plus drinks & service