When does a one-off restaurant become a small group? In the case of the Delamina restaurants, which now number three across London, their savvy and smart mixture of small and larger Middle Eastern plates, to-die-for cocktails and unusual, well-sourced wines have meant that punters, including countless Arbuturian readers, have flocked to their locations, whether it’s the Marylebone establishment, the Covent Garden flagship, Delamina Townhouse, or Delamina East in Shoreditch, where everything began ten years ago: a lifetime ago in restaurant terms.
Still, visiting Delamina East once again on an unseasonably hot Wednesday evening in July is a salutary reminder that if an establishment endures for this amount of time, it’s doing something right. (Although the continued existence of Sexy Fish might also act as a correlative to that.) I walked in to find the restaurant full, buzzy and without any empty tables, showing that word of mouth continues to endure. One pomegranate martini and a couple of excellent dips with pita later – the smoky aubergine, tahini with zhoug and hummus are all truly world-class – it’s time to peruse the menu and see what appeals.
The answer swiftly comes back ‘quite a lot’. We err on the side of restraint (relative term) with the small plates to share, which include mini-chicken cups in lettuce with tahini sauce, fiery mushrooms with paprika and my friend Catherine’s choice, a charred cauliflower with crème fraiche, pomegranate molasses and seeds. Accompanied by a couple of glasses of the excellent Fumé Blanc from Israel – the Middle Eastern wines are the ones to opt for – it’s the perfect curtain-raiser.
We are soon glad that we opted on the side of restraint rather than excess when we order the larger plates. There are a couple of carnivorous options that should be enjoyed with aplomb, in the form of the house shawarma and the lamb baharat, and accompanied by a bottle of the excellent Lebanese Carignan. We also added a rather less meaty dish of seared king prawns, which had all the depth and richness of flavour that the other options boasted, and it would have seemed wrong not to throw in a side of crispy rosemary potatoes with garlic-infused yoghurt. “Do you want a grilled hispi cabbage too”, asked our excellent waiter. Well, it would have been rude not to.
We were reaching perilously close to saturation point now, because this was a lot of food even by our standards, but there is also the necessity of ordering dessert, because pudding plays a large role in the other Delamina restaurants, and so it proves here. The cheesecake is fabulous; not too rich or heavy, with an effervescent lightness that makes for a truly superb and unmissable end to the meal, accompanied by an Old Fashioned that is, as you’d hope for, the perfect blend of sweet and savoury. Then, two hours after we walked in, we’re back into the warm Shoreditch evening, replete and happy after a truly fabulous meal. Here’s to another decade, and then plenty more in the future.
Delamina EAST, For more information, and for bookings – not to mention details of other restaurants – please visit www.delminakitchen.co.uk.
