Toum, London W1: ‘The rotisserie is very much not rotating. Has there been a power cut?’ – restaurant review
Toum, a modern Lebanese rotisserie with French culinary influences and chic cocktail-bar vibes, has recently appeared just off Regent Street, near Hamleys toy store. I often use Hamleys as a landmark for non-Londoners, because they might not find directions such as “It’s on Maddox Street, close to the Kingly Street food drag” all that useful, but may very well have experienced, or at least heard of, Hamleys’ daily “Friends Parade” with Professor Bubbles. If so, Toum is all of five minutes’ walk away, and serves cold tomatillo martinis and, more importantly, posh rotisserie chicken from a grill behind the chefs’ heads that’s in full view as you approach the front door. So very inviting.
Or at least it is on social media. Toum is the pared-back sibling of Aline up the road, it’s open seven days a week and has a beautiful vinyl listening bar called Encore in the basement. While Aline offers a lengthy celebration of traditional Lebanese comfort food – two dozen meze, and sea bass and lamb chops from the grill – Toum keeps things simple, especially at lunchtime, when it’s even simpler still. There’s that humble roast chicken – described by breathless bloggers as “impossibly juicy” – served with toum (garlic sauce), although chimichurri and Café de Paris butter are on offer, too. There’s also a steak option and a vegetarian aubergine schnitzel, as well as a light waft of meze – well, hummus, pickles and that’s about it. Then again, in surroundings as elegant as these, with staff dressed so nicely and that rotating grill filled with succulent, Lebanese-spiced chicken by the front door, who would need anything more?
Well, I’ll begin by “needing” a rotisserie chicken, because the problem with any restaurant that says: “We don’t serve much, but what we do serve, we’re experts at”, leaves itself zero room for manoeuvre. At lunchtime a couple of weeks ago, with Regent Street in full sales bedlam mode, we arrive to find a flurry of staff on the floor, a chef behind the counter, managers at the bar having one of those laptop meetings that are always so conducive to a convivial welcome, but, oddly, no chickens on that acclaimed grill. In fact, it is turned off and the rotisserie is very much not rotating. Has there been a power cut? Have they not paid the electricity bill?
“Are you … open?” I ask. Apparently so, though I smell no food. We’re presented with menus on which the £20 rotisserie poulet frîtes is definitely on offer. Our server disappears to get us some water, but no other drinks are offered, even though there is definitely a bar, because I can see it. “No one on the floor has been trained,” I say forlornly, as I always do in restaurants that sound fabulous on paper and were clearly firing on all cylinders that night six weeks ago when all the influencers loved their free chicken.
We order the £9.50 hummus doused with bright green olive oil and topped with crunchy fried chickpeas that are cold, but nevertheless delicious. The hummus itself is nothing to pine for, though – this is no Oma or Leydi hummus, or indeed anything touched by our Lord God Yotam Ottolenghi. A side of pickles at £4.50 is very good, with lots of crunchy, sharp celery, carrot and baby beetroot; in fact, it’s possibly the highlight of lunch. The house bread is a small, chunky, unlovable wretch of a flatbread that’s the size of my palm and comes with a teaspoon’s-worth of oil.
Then – huzzah! – the chicken, which seems to be mysteriously self-cooking and has patently been lurking downstairs in its anonymous “Lebanese-spiced” glaze, along with a handful of unsalted shoestring fries and a small bowl of inoffensive chimichurri. Allegedly half a chicken, this is instead a small portion comprising a bit of breast and a leg with browned skin, and it’s nothing remotely earth-changing.
On the other hand, I will never forget the aubergine schnitzel vegetarian option, featuring a half-aubergine steamed – or had it been boiled? – to the texture of a bloated sanitary towel. This moist slab was encrusted in a green, herb-based powder and came on a mound of yoghurt. It felt like vegetarian cooking by someone who had been emotionally wounded by a vegetarian – this was personal. I sent it back almost untouched, but the management continued their meeting at the bar, tapping their laptops and never once checking if we’d eaten our food, or offering cocktails, or anything else that might help keep Toum’s doors open.
We ordered dessert – a £9.50 chocolate mousse with a layer of fruit gel – then left after paying the £83.19 bill and skipping past that redundant rotisserie, which was still turned off. There were no chickens there, but I was spitting feathers.
Toum 18a Maddox Street, London W1 (no phone). Open all week, noon-10.30pm (Sun 5pm). From about £50 a head, plus drinks and service
