Soukitchen, Southville: 'It's been too long since I’ve been to Soukitchen'
One of Bristol's longest standing restaurants, revisited
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“I’ve come to London to watch a play about a green witch.”
“Wicked?”
“Yeah, it was alright.”
It’s sparkling repartee like this that keeps my brother coming back for more on WhatsApp, but it was his next question that was much more pertinent “and I suppose you’re going somewhere for dinner too?”
He knows me well. In fact, it turned out to be a spot I’d been to just once before, almost exactly ten years earlier. With him. Ten years is a long time in the restaurant world. Palomar opened to much critical acclaim in 2014; a narrow room on the edge of Chinatown, where it remains to this day. It must be doing something right. As I dabbed fluffy kubaneh into a little pot of baba ganoush — the most delicious muddy grey sludge in existence — I thought “it’s been too long since I’ve been to Soukitchen”.
I would call Soukitchen Bristol’s answer to Palomar, similarly dealing in good value, small-to-medium-sized plates of vaguely Levantine cuisine, while quite happily borrowing bits and pieces from surrounding regions, but Souk is, in fact, four years older, opening way back in 2010.
The space hasn’t changed much since 2010; a few small tables snugly squeezed together, window seats along two sides, the kitchen opposite one of them — if not exactly open then allowing enough of a glimpse to build excitement levels.
On the second Friday in January, the earliest table four of us could get was at 8.15pm — once a prime spot, now you might as well invite me to an all-night rave as dinner after 7.30pm — testament to Soukitchen’s enduring popularity as a textbook neighbourhood snug. And perhaps the fact that, unless everyone else was on the Souk Spritzes, bubbly with Nozecco (we certainly weren’t), people are sacking off dry January even earlier than usual this year. Hardly surprising given the weather. And the news. And the economy. Actually, maybe slightly surprising given the latter.
In Bristol, if you go to Souk and fail to order the flatbread and hummus, you might as well say you hate street art, or that perhaps Netanyahu’s not so bad after all. There was a time, at some point between olive oil being an ear ointment and matcha ousting the builder’s brew, when flatbread and hummus would have been considered exotic in the UK, filed alongside self-driving cars and The Internet. Nowadays, it is a mainstay of British culture, found everywhere from Aberdeen cash-and-carries to wake buffets in deepest Cornwall.
Souk’s offering is comprised of puffy, pliable bread to be swooped through tahini-rich velvet whorls surrounding a ruby pool of Turkish chili butter. Other dips are available, rotating from labneh to taramasalata to muhammara, even dahl on rare occasions. I’ve never had another as good as the hummus, deservedly never off the menu since day one. Souk could offer this dish alone and be packed out, although a final bill of under £120 for four people, including wine, service and much more than just the flatbread (less than our Soho meal for two) goes some way to explaining perpetual popularity.
Halloumi is another mainstay at Souk, coming these days as one thick plank rather than two, ridged from the chargrill, smoky and gently frazzled on the outside, semi-molten and squeaky within, and always doused in religious quantities of a black seed honey so lavishly thick in texture it almost feels chewy. This time it came with a rather meagre quarter of pear on top, but my favourite iteration is in summer, when wedges of sweetly crisp watermelon have just the right refreshing juiciness to embrace the squeak of the milky cheese. Or it could just be that everything seems better in summer.
Carrot was the most popular dish on the table but I was already semi-saturated carrot-wise, having been gifted a single raw carrot by a friend in the pub before dinner, as if I was some sort of Bristolian Bugs Bunny tribute act. What’s up, my lover? Soukitchen went above and beyond. Far from just plonking down a platter of raw roots, they presented us with a pile of tender orange logs, peels of the same veg wisping up from the centre like smoke from a bonfire. A slick of creamy labneh underneath, dollops of amba — that pickle-y middle eastern condiment, here made with tomato rather than the more typical mango, with Jamie Oliver-baiting bravado — and a pelting of dukkah for nutty crunch, united to make arguably the best thing you can do to a carrot without baking it into a cake.
Dishes at Soukitchen are never knowingly under-pomegranated, and the pink jewels did their best to liven up a rather more pedestrian lamb, chickpea and aubergine pilaf. Comforting rather than exciting, a carby cloak from the lurking ghouls of winter beyond steamed-up windows.
Cauliflower and celeriac were both pomegranate-less and, though not reaching the heights of the carrot, brought a touch of yin and yang to the table. Florets of the former came deep-fried, spiced and crispy; bright and zingy with tahini, yoghurt and pickled sultanas. Thick wedges of the latter, nutty, fudgy and faintly sweet, were paired with meaty oysters mushrooms in a luxuriously creamy sauce strewn with lentils, like frogspawn in a spring pond, and gently spiked with Metaxa, the brandy-like Greek spirit.
Labneh cheesecake, smooth and tangy like the yoghurt from whence it came, was flanked by poached plums, glowing the same rosy-cheeks-after-a-long-winter-walk as pomegranate, and a few fragile panes of sugar stained with sesame. It had a sense of breakfast fashioned into dessert, although coming from someone who does indeed eat cheesecake for breakfast, you should take that with a pinch of salt. Or, as is my preference, a drizzle of warm dulce de leche and a scattering of peanuts. And then a pinch of salt.
At this point I have to admit that a lot of my references may be somewhat esoteric, but as The Bristol Sauce’s number one reader before I started writing, I feel only an obligation to make myself laugh. And remember: it’s all well and good going to the West End for a show and a slap-up dinner, but sometimes there really is no place like home.
All words by PXandTarts, all photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Soukitchen, 277 North St, BS3 1JP
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Thanks for an extra excuse to skive off work now!!