Joseph’s Brasserie, London: ‘Let’s celebrate’ – restaurant review
Joseph’s Brasserie, 221 Kensington High Street, London W8 6SG (020 3337 9356; josephsbrasserie.co.uk). Wraps from £9; mezze £8.50 – £16; main courses £16.25 – £26.50; desserts £8.50. Wines from £26 a bottle
In one corner of the lengthy menu at Joseph’s Brasserie, a lovely new Lebanese restaurant in London’s Kensington, is a description which may give some people pause. It’s listed under Signature Dishes and begins “Tender lamb intestines stuffed with a savoury mixture of rice…” The sweet word “tender”, used for kisses and caresses, has to do an awful lot of heavy lifting there, when it’s shepherding the word “intestines” into view. It’s just too duodenal, isn’t it? Too redolent of lunch on the way out of the body as waste, rather than on the way in as pleasure.
Ah, the curse of nouns. Of course, if you look up a picture of fweregh, the Lebanese name for the dish, what you get is a pleasingly gnarly sausage; a sibling to the haggis and a cousin to bangers the world over. You did know that’s what sausages are made of, didn’t you? Good. We didn’t order it, as it happens: the fweregh weighs half a kilo, costs £80, was not suitable for everyone at our table and would have dominated lunch. But it says something about the place: that if you know where to look or, better still, ask for guidance from the eponymous Joseph, you may well find a few Lebanese dishes cooked here by his father, Yazbek, that you haven’t before encountered.
Other things, however, are familiar. Very familiar. At least to me. Only as I was striding down Kensington High Street did I clock that Joseph occupies the same location as Pascor, a Middle Eastern-themed restaurant I reviewed just over 18 months ago, but which obviously has gone the way of too many other hospitality businesses. This, I realise, hands a loaded gun to those who complain about the geographic spread of these columns. He doesn’t just review occasionally in the same London tube zone; sometimes he reviews in the same bloody square footage. On the one hand, guilty as charged; on the other, if I’d been put off by that, we’d all have missed out – or at least I would have.
Downstairs little has changed, save that fat spits of lamb and chicken shawarma now turn slowly behind the counter for their sandwich business. There are fryers for falafel and a grill for lamb kofta, skewers and the like. Smoke pirouettes upwards and the air smells like a narrow Middle Eastern street after dark, even in daylight. All of this is served with the flatbreads made from scratch, which are soft and pillowy on one side, and crisp and friable on the other. The upstairs dining room has, however, had a makeover. Now there are turquoise walls with gold edging, and hung on the walls are antique etchings, picked up in Portobello Market. On one side there are Victorian views of London, on the other equally venerable images of Lebanon, of grand ancient vistas and cypress trees punching the sky like insistent exclamation marks. I could perhaps have added the words “in happier times” to that description of Lebanon, but the tragic carnage and political chaos unfolding there is so obvious, it barely needs referencing in a restaurant review. For now, let’s celebrate the food culture.
The menu is long and detailed and covers the usual. There are three takes on hummus, including hummus Beiruti, spiky with free chilli. There are stuffed vine leaves, platters of labneh and the whacking chilli and red pepper fire of muhammara. There are kibbeh and cheese rolls. We have a deep, verdant bowl of tabbouleh to bring greenery to the table and another of moutabal, the soothing bash of roasted aubergine, which is the best kind of beige. In the middle is a well filled with grassy olive oil in which sparkle beads of pomegranate. It demands a sweeping through with torn wedges of the still hot bread. To the familiar we add the unfamiliar, soft folds of sliced lamb’s tongue, sautéed in lemon and garlic, a self-saucing dish which demands more bread. There are small, coarsely ground lamb sausages made on site with an edge of offal and a hit of chilli, and which come in a liquor that is sweet and sharp with pomegranate molasses. Now we have an extra use for the mdardara, a nutty mix of rice and lentils, threaded with sweet, caramelised onions like toffee.
A mixed grill of lamb kofta and both lamb and chicken shish is solid enough, but it is completely overshadowed by another signature dish listed as Sultan Ibrahim. It brings four floured and seasoned red mullet, deep-fried until golden, so that the flesh pulls away from the bone. We find ourselves using our fingers to pick at the good stuff right up to the top of the head. Through the crust there are flashes of silver skin and they lie on a rustling mound of shredded flatbread that has also been deep-fried, then dusted with the purple of sumac. On the side is a bowl of sticky tahini sauce. It’s the kind of dish you fantasise about eating at some restaurant on a corniche at the eastern end of the Med, with the smell of salt and seaweed in your nostrils, as a blisteringly hot day gives way to the close, sagging warmth of an evening by the sea. It’s not cheap at £40, but consider the sheer volume of fish. Also, I will from now on be furiously shredding and deep-frying flatbreads.
We finish with their knefe, a wedge of sweet and salty melted cheese spreading gently across the plate and topped by a lozenge of syrup-soaked pastry, fragrant with rose and pistachio. Alongside is a bowl of a set milk pudding, dressed with orange blossom and rose water. Finally, we have thimbles of thick, dark coffee, heavy with black cardamom. We are alone in the dining room this lunchtime which, as ever, seems completely wrong. No, Joseph’s is not cheap. You may find cheaper Lebanese food amid the community clustered around the Edgware Road, but it is not outrageous for Kensington High Street, and you can get a shawarma wrap here for £9. As we are leaving Joseph asks us sweetly if we will leave a positive review on Google. In the sense that this will indeed turn up somewhere on Google, I like to think that I’ve done as he asked.
News bites
StreetSmart, the charity that tackles homelessness, has launched its annual campaign to raise funds in the run-up to Christmas through an extra £1 added to restaurant bills. More than 600 restaurants and pubs are participating this year, including veterans of the campaign like St John and the River Café, alongside Mana in Manchester, Box E in Bristol, Upstairs by Tom Shepherd in Lichfield and Ynyshir in Wales. To find out more about what the charity does with the cash raised and for a full list of participating restaurants, visit streetsmart.org.uk
There’s good news for those who don’t want to schlep to an out-of-town flatpack furniture warehouse to get their fix of Swedish meatballs and Dime Bar cakes. Ikea has opened its first standalone restaurant, in London’s Hammersmith. The 75-seat café, which occupies the site of a what was a branch of Wasabi, is next door to the newly renovated Ikea Hammersmith City Store, and will also be open for breakfast.
Chef Claude Bosi and his wife, Lucy, are opening a second Josephine Bouchon, the bistro celebrating the food of Bosi’s native Lyon, which opened to such acclaim in London’s Fulham earlier this year. The new restaurant will be in Marylebone and will take over the site of what was Daylesford Organic on Blandford Street (josephinebouchon.com)
Join Jay Rayner and Grace Dent on Monday 16 December as they discuss his new cookbook Nights Out At Home, live at Kings Place and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on X @jayrayner1
