Berenjak restaurant review: Can you please everyone with one take on an entire cuisine?

This is a loud, lively new entry to Soho where the air smells of meat and charcoal smoke and you can eat well for £35 a head, but Ed Cumming wonders if it’s as authentic as it claims

Berenjak, on Romilly Street, opened last autumn to warmish reviews. Its slightly silly website says it is “reinterpreting the classic hole in the wall eateries lining the streets of Tehran.” Fine.

Everything needs a concept. My Iranian source says this “isn’t really a thing”, but he has lived in west London his whole life and I sometimes wonder if he has only seen Iran from the back of a limo.

Apparently Berenjak’s signature dish, the Kabab Torki, a doner-style pile of meat on chips with lettuce and sauces, does not hum with Persian authenticity, and the founder-chef, Kian Samyani, who previously cooked at Gymkhana and Brigadiers, betrays his CV by using more chilli than you would expect in an Iranian kitchen. Who cares?

This is a loud, lively new entry to Soho where the air smells of meat and charcoal smoke and you can eat well for £35 a head.

Besides, there’s always someone ready to out-authenticate you. If a Japanese magazine asked five Brits to pontificate on spag bol or steak and ale pie they’d get five strongly held opinions and none would be correct.

They don’t take reservations, but you give them your mobile number and get a text when the table is ready. It’s a relief from the loitering-with-intent nonsense

Berenjak’s aesthetic is kebab-shop luxe. It’s not dissimilar to The Palomar in shape, with enough fancy tiling, artful distressing and plants to reassure you that the space has deliberated over by people with deep pockets, in this case the JKS group, which also paid for Brigadiers and Gymkhana.

There are a small number of tables at the back and fixed seats along the long kitchen counter in the front. Sit there, as we do, and you can watch your meal being rotated, flamed, baked, sauced, spiced and otherwise assembled.

They don’t take reservations, but you give them your mobile number and get a text when the table is ready. It’s a relief from the loitering-with-intent nonsense which makes places like Padella such a chore. It’s a civilised system. Technology might not be ready to solve the Irish border but it has made queuing for dinner much easier, and frankly one of these innovations makes more difference to day-to-day life. Pop round the corner to the French House and you can enjoy a cold half-pint in the company of Soho’s last drunks.

You wouldn’t want to spend more than half an hour in there, so it’s lucky that’s how long our wait was.

We sat at the bar. The drinks menu is oriented better than most towards non-drinkers, with a selection of softs to which alcohol may be added. Among these was the sharbat, a blackcurrant drink, like a kind of butch Ribena, which my man-from-Tehran told me, via text from Earl’s Court, was surprisingly authentic and unusual to find in London.

Whatever the poutine police tell you, chips are never improved by being a soggy base layer for other sauces

Our waiter insisted we begin the solid part of our meal with one of each kind of bread: a Taftoon and a Sangak. I couldn’t tell you which was which, but they were hot out of the oven, pillowy inside and covered in sesame seeds. They are only meant as a tearable shovel for the mazeh dips, which followed them across the counter in little brass trays.

Ikask E Bademjoon comprised the flesh of a flame-blackened aubergine, stirred through with walnuts. Mast O Esfanaj was a ball of thick yoghurt with spinach and more garlic than you might want on a Hinge date, but with a rich dairy sourness which suggested confidence in the chefs. On another trip I’d try the livers. We didn’t get the hummus. Two people have told me it was “so-so”, and isn’t that the best a hummus can hope for?

Next the kababs. The individual elements of the Torki were difficult to discern but the overall effect was not unpleasant, in a late-night-who-cares kind of way.

Whatever the poutine police tell you, chips are never improved by being a soggy base layer for other sauces. Better was the Jujeh, chicken that had been flavoured and stained yellow by its saffron marinade, then charcoal-grilled until lightly charred on the outside but still plump and glistening with its own juices within.

There was rice and pickles on the site. On Instagram just after we went I said I didn’t think the rice and pickles were the point. A commenter landed in no time to explain that in fact the rice and pickles were “the most important part”. There’s always one.

Should you go? Yes.
Would I go again? Yes.

Berenjak​, 27 Romilly St, Soho, London W1D 5AL; berenjaklondon.com; 020 3319 8120