| Restaurant Review - Tas Pide |
20è22 New Globe Walk, SE1 (opposite the Globe Theatre) Tel 020 7928 3300 or 020 7633 9777 Open daily (12 am to 4.30 pm on Sundays)
|
|
|
We went along on a Saturday at 7.30 pm. The
restaurant was emptyish, but also fully booked . . . ´So will you have a
table tonight?° . . . ´Yes at 9.30 pm° . . . ´Okay°. But what were we to do
for two hours on Bankside? Obvious: go to Tate Modern; it was quiet, warm
and easy to walk around; the shop was open; it doesn°t close until 10 pm on
Saturday; and it°s free. So two hours went easily. Then back to Tas. We sat down to two bowls of complimentary lentil soup, tasty unleavened bread and yoghourt dip and ordered a bottle of Buzbag (the only Turkish red on the wine list è great name) which was raw, rough, and tannin rich. The wine list is fairly extensive: French, Italian and New World, but short on the Turkish or other Eastern Mediterranean wine. Why no Lebanese wine I wonder? Pide (say it pee-day) is a Turkish pizza. It has a fish- or boat-shaped unleavened bread base. It is baked in a wood-fired brick oven in view of the dining area. My Kayasali Pide was topped with apricots, hellum cheese, peppers and mint. Helen had Kasarli Pide which is topped with Kasarli cheese, dried tomatoes, mint and parsley. Pide is best eaten by hand (use the right if you want to do it correctly) and it is sliced through to make that easy. But there are knives and forks. The menu also has a range of fish, meat and vegetarian dishes and rice. We had spinach and tomatoes and a mixed salad as side orders, but that was getting too much. Especially because the puddings are sublime. Helen had Sutlu Incir, with baked milk and honey with figs: while I had Firin Sullac with rice, milk, rose water, and cornflour, orange rind and topped with cinnamon. Both served cold and notably, not heavy at all: they balanced the pide. Following all that, the Turkish coffee was as good as in Arabia. Our bill, including wine, was £43.50 for two. There are three-course set menus from £7.45, so you could eat for a lot less than £20 per head. This is the third restaurant that Onder Sahan has opened in SE1, the others being in The Cut and Borough High Street. The building is an old warehouse, and the style a Turkish vernacular with applied timber ceiling and panels of tiles, which doesn°t really work. But who cares? The oven looks great, service is considerate and efficient, and there°s pleasant live Andalucian guitar music in the background. This is a pretty class act: I just hope Onder doesn°t overstretch himself. Robert Holden |
||
|
||