Middle Eastern restaurant Bubala to open in Soho
The Spitalfields-based vegetable-focused restaurant will open on Poland Street in April on the former Vasco & Piero’s Pavilion site.
The 50-cover restaurant will have an eight-seat kitchen counter overlooking a yakitori grill. It wll serve dishes from the Spitalifields menu as well as a number of new additions, with signature dishes to include halloumi with black seed honey; confit potato latkes with toum and Aleppo chilli. Other options will include hispi cabbage with mandarin and ras el hanout ponzu; and Yemeni malawach with stracciatella, kalamata olives and smoked aubergine honey.
The drinks menu will feature wine on tap, as well as bottled natural wines, UK produced beers and Gazoz house sodas, a homemade seltzer combined with natural, locally sourced fruits, flowers, spices, herbs and syrups.
Bubala was founded by former Berber & Q general manager Marc Summers in 2019 with Helen Graham, who had previously cooked at The Palomar and The Barbary, as executive chef. The restaurant, which takes its name from a Yiddish term of endearment that is said to often be used by grandparents and roughly translates as ‘sweetheart’, has won acclaim for its creative vegetarian cooking.
“The past two years have been unimaginably hard for our entire industry, so I feel incredibly lucky to have one site, let alone to be opening a second,” says Summers.
“It’s always been a long-term goal for Bubala to grow, but it’s a step that I wanted to take carefully and one that I didn’t want to rush. I feel like we’ve got the best possible team now and the site feels perfect. I just can’t wait to open and bring a bit of Bubala to central London.”
