The Times Magazine 61might think. Except that mine happens to live
50 yards from Sunday in Brooklyn (not sure
she was part of the focus-grouping that decided
this was the right location) and I thought it
would have to be actual hell on earth to be
not worth inviting her.
Sadly, it was. More of a Cold Night in Stoke
(as we say in football circles) or a Tuesday in
Idlib than a Sunday in Brooklyn. Loud hip-hop,
pretty young Instagrammers, bovine men in
backwards caps hunkered over their grits like
cowboys back from six weeks on the range,
shovelling it in with one hand while scrolling
dating apps in the other, and a menu of
dreary aberrations for Joe Wickes junkies,
such as avocado toast, chia pudding and
the aforementioned bone broth (“They feed
people stock now?” I could just hear my
mother tutting), as well as the usual brunch
horrors of shakshuka (always horrid) and
piles of flabby pancakes that I could see being
photographed but not eaten by the overgrown
toddlers around me, whose skinniness
suggested long immersion in the “24:0’” fasting
diet, where you eat only after you’re dead.
So, spying my mother on the pavement
outside, checking her phone and hoping
she’d come to the wrong place, I made a dash
for it, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her
into Al Waha, which was for a long time the
best Lebanese in London, an actual proper
restaurant, with a proper chef, which is not
full of people pretending to be somewhere else
on a different day.
It was not full of anyone, in fact. It seldom
is. I don’t know why. Here you’ve got half a
dozen legendary raw lamb dishes, the best
makanek and sambousek for miles around,
wonderful spatchcocked quail... Oh. No, you
haven’t. Something has happened to the menu.
Gone, after more than 30 years, is the biblical,
leatherbound roster of everything that is
best in the world’s greatest cuisine, and in
its place is an A4 sheet of paper containing...
Deep-fried calamari? Chicken wings?
Tzatziki? MOUSSAKA??????
Oh dear, I said to the lovely Iranian
waiter, what has happened?
A new owner, apparently. The old chef is
still here but the proprietor has decided that
the menu needed to be slimmed down and, for
some reason, made more Greek. I appreciate
that Al Waha never seemed to do great
business, but this was a disaster. I managed
to dig out a couple of classics from the old
menu, the kibbeh are still there (although
not the raw “kibbeh nayeh”), as is the hummus
kawarma and the tabbouleh. But the calamari
were shocking, the wine list has gone to
pot and the wonderful giant crudités selection
has been reduced to a couple of sliced carrots
and four radishes.
It took Notting Hill a long time to kill
Al Waha, but they have finally done it. So hats
off, I suppose. All the more room for Sunday
in Brooklyns, which are much more the locals’
sort of thing.
But if you are looking for a small
independent café/restaurant with a bit of a
buzz, then I recommend a lovely stroll down
the Marylebone Road from W2 and left up
Albany Street to Primrose Hill, where a placecalled Sam’s is causing something of a stir.
It is named for its co-owner, Sam Frears, son
of the film director Stephen Frears and Mary-
Kay Wilmers, longtime editor of the London
Review of Books, who is in cahoots with the
Scottish novelist Andrew O’Hagan and his
wife, Lindsey (who no doubt has a Nobel prize
for opera or something, I haven’t checked).
It’s on a lovely sunlit corner in what is
admittedly another playground of the rich and
cosmopolitan, but it’s a pure passion project
and coming at you from a different planet
altogether than Sunday in Brooklyn.
On a random Friday lunchtime, I bumped
into not only Hadley Freeman, author of the
bestselling family memoir House of Glass and
newly crowned magazine columnist of the
year, but also Ray Kelvin, the genius founder
of Ted Baker who was so horribly wronged by
bitter and twisted foot soldiers of the culture
war a while ago over his (perfectly harmless
and charming) tendency to hug people, my own
sister (less of a coincidence: I was meeting her
for lunch) and I think I even clocked old Frearsy
himself. It is possible there were also some
Gentiles in there. I don’t know, I didn’t ask.
Sam himself, who is one of Britain’s very
few disabled and nearly blind restaurateurs
(he has a rare condition called familial
dysautonomia, or Riley-Day syndrome,
which almost exclusively afflicts Ashkenazi
Jews, like me), was not there in person that
day, but his presence is strongly felt.
In between the schmoozing and the
schlepping of nachas, I drooled over a menu
of glorious-looking full English breakfasts,
either plant-based or gloriously porky (black
pudding! Bubble and squeak!), breakfast rolls,
BLTs, steak sarnies, wild mushrooms on
toast... But as it was a Friday we yodelled for
fish and were rewarded with a wonderfully
fat grilled mackerel fillet on crunchy dill
toast with beetroot and horseradish relish
(why not call a chrain a “chrain”?), excellent
old-fashioned fish cakes, with very good
homemade hollandaise and tartare sauces,
and a lovely plaice special with new potatoes
and broccoli, on a clean white plate with half
a lemon, just like the good old days.
The interior is colourful and bookish (love
the big communal table downstairs), the staff
are young, clever and cultured, the clientele
noisy and Jewish, the food very good and the
sense of a brief Arcadian idyll to be enjoyed
in the shadow of the screeching capital nearby
quite deliciously palpable. In fact, it didn’t feel
so much like a Friday in Primrose Hill as a...
Well, you can probably fill in the blank for
yourself, can’t you? nSunday in Brooklyn
98 Westbourne Grove,
London W2 (020 7630
1060; sundayinbk.co.uk)Al Waha
75 Westbourne Grove,
London W2
(020 7229 0806;
alwaharestaurant.co.uk)Sam’s Cafe
40 Chalcot Road,
London NW1
(020 7916 3736; samscafe
primrosehill.com)Sam’s Cafe is opened by Helena
Bonham Carter. The three co-owners,
Lindsey O’Hagan, Sam Frears and
Andrew O’Hagan, are on the right