Kebab Queen
Covent Garden, London
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Do the customers scoffing their shish kebabs upstairs at Maison Bab in Covent Garden even know what’s going on underneath their feet? That there’s a secret restaurant, a chandelier-hung hidey-hole, downstairs, where 10 guests a night sit around an open kitchen eating a £90 tasting menu directly off a heated counter? No knives, no forks, no plates? The Kebab Queen concept is unhinged, and (at our previous inspection) we loved it, finding it ‘more wonderful than weird’. That sentiment still holds true under new Turkish head chef Pamir Zeydan – albeit with some caveats (which, to give the man his due, we’ll come to later). The concept may not have originated with Zeydan but he has made it its own. He doesn’t just cook; he plays host, greeting every diner in person, announcing every dish to the group, and pressing palms at the end of the night. The menu has evolved from the original 'kebab tasting menu' concept to an exploration of modern Turkish cuisine, with its Anatolian, Kurdish, Mediterranean and Balkan reference points. The first bite has us gripped: a crisp kataifi pastry cannoli with Jerusalem artichoke and chestnut-flavoured kaymak cream. There follows a succession of dishes plated directly onto the hygienically treated Dekton worktop: a pressed celeriac terrine with quince and tulum cheese in a blowtorched savoy cabbage wrap; excellent, outsize duck manti dumplings; seafood meze of octopus and tarhana (crisps of dried fermented yoghurt) dotted with black houmous and splashed with shellfish bisque like an edible Jackson Pollock. It’s liberating to be given permission to eat with one’s hands, even if it’s not entirely clear why cutlery and crockery wouldn’t be preferable (try picking up slippery manti with your greasy fingers). Zeydan sets standards high but the surrounding hospitality doesn’t always measure up. On our visit the loos (shared with the upstairs restaurant) were in a state by the end of the night, and the wine service is passionless (even though we shell out £60pp for the wine flight in the absence of anything thrilling at the lower end of the list). That said, Kebab Queen remains one of London’s more original restaurants.
