Wwhile going to Carmelo In Queen’s Park, northwest London, in the first week of the new year, I remember that January is always a strange time to do reviews. The whole month lends itself to squatting down and recovering, with places closed for weeks and others offering the shortest hours, sometimes with radiators off to save on bills. In fact, it often feels like the opposite of hospitality. I’ve sat in many dry and drafty dining rooms in January feeling like the only person in Britain who isn’t having a can of Campbell’s soup on the couch that night.
So it was a nice sight to arrive in Carmel, tucked away on a side street near the tube station, to find the place so damn welcoming and vibrant. It was a frosty Wednesday, but the place was packed with people eager to try this new North African / Eastern Mediterranean opening from the folks behind East London’s Berber & Q’s. Any customer eager to try anything in the current climate is a joyous sight. and Carmel exudes a kind of sparkling, low-voltage cheer, with candlelit tables, low-key music, and charming staff.
When Berber & Q opened in 2015, I became an instant fan, in large part because it felt like a Middle Eastern steakhouse that had docked with an Ottolenghi cookbook and took root in an Ibizan chiringuito. Berber & Q was loud, very delicious, quite dark, completely impossible to book, and resided in a former minicab office that had undergone what looked like a minor remodel. You ate smoked short ribs with date glaze or cauliflower shawarma with beets and whipped feta, and it was very much a case of digging, getting dirty, and throwing everything you were wearing for a boiled wash when you arrived. House.
If that all sounds a bit hectic, you’re in luck, because Carmel is his much more adult relative. Or, more accurately, it’s as if someone shakes Berber & Q by the lapels, says, “Time to talk to yourself, son,” and then said goodbye. There’s no loud, throbbing house music in Carmel, though the bathroom has one of those strange soundscapes that made my dining partner Hugh wonder if it was music or a broken AC unit; Or maybe we’ve both grown old
Carmel’s dinner menu is lush, painstaking, and decidedly meticulous. A bowl of premium, silky hummus, for example, is made even more grand with a rich topping of lamb ragout garnished with pistachio and curry leaves, while a premium cured sardine appears beautifully laid out on a bed of ratte potato. , piped sour cream. and bathed in lemon verjus. Both are delicious and clearly painstakingly road tested, even if they barely scratch the surface of our appetite.
We shared some charred hispi cabbage, a whole quarter to be exact, expertly crunchy and caramelized, served on a bed of labneh and made irresistible with dukkah macadamia. A bowl of gnocchi is spooky as a cloud, and it’s a million miles from the starch bullets I make at home. Carmel’s gnocchi come in a vibrant spring-colored turmeric yogurt sauce with spinach and mizithra cheese; the dish is perhaps too delicately seasoned, but the tenderness of those gnocchi lives on in my mind. Three fearsome large king prawns, their shells bathed in harissa, arrive in a skillet of butter ‘nduja with zucchini tzatziki, and they taste beautiful, albeit an excellent and messy job to handle.
With just about everything at Carmel, the true flavors are in the spreads, yogurts and dressings, without a lot of carbs available to bulk up dishes. Fortunately, however, there are warm, fresh sourdough flatbreads with toppings like spiced lamb with aleppo chili or, in our case, tarama with softly sliced potatoes and rosemary to provide a little weight to hungry diners. Large plates for sharing start at £ 25 for the slow-roasted chicken urfa, which turns into a piece of sourdough soaked in dangerously sweet and sour pomegranate molasses, with a little curried pickled radicchio on the side. We both demolished it easily. Other dishes to share include smoked lamb neck shawarma with shio koji marinade and seared cod with palourde clams. A dark chocolate tahini pudding with cream of tahini has a crisp cookie bottom and tooth breaker, but is ridiculously delicious.
Being all posh and grown-up, Carmel may have lost some of her East London relative’s generosity, but in culinary ingenuity, she leaves Berber & Q far behind. Carmel is dainty, charming, good for both a date night and for a cold midweek in early 2022, and it’s absolutely choppy. A very promising start to the year of eating out.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism