Bubala is a small London chain of three vegetarian restaurants (in Kings Cross, Spitafield and Soho) focusing on middle-eastern food. I lunched there today and it was one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. That’s high praise for a non-fancy restaurant. What I mean by non-fancy is that this is an informal space where all the attention is on the food and the service. Everything is just done so well.

There are two set lunches, both priced at £33 (and, of course, you can go à la carte), but it requires two people to commit. They are regular vegetarian and vegan, and we chose vegan because it looked slightly more interesting. In fact, they told me that 80% of what they serve is actually vegan, so this isn’t restricting options too much.

Right from the beginning the food was just brilliant.

Always judge a restaurant by their bread. This laffa bread was quite beautiful. With set lunch you can get a second, and a third if you need.

Baba Ganoush, curry leaf oil, pine nuts. The aubergines are smoked for four hours: this is the first thing they do in the morning when they arrive – smoke loads of aubergines. This was quite amazing, and the curry leaf works perfectly.

There’s humus and there’s humus. This was astonishingly good: hummus, harissa, apricot, jalapeño oil. Perhaps a little over-shadowed by the baba ganoush, but brilliant none-the-less.

Falafel, tahini, amba, sumac onions. Brilliant.

Oyster mushrooms, grilled, and then flavoured indecently with tamari and coriander seed. This is vegan meat! Lovely.

Now for some salad: daikon, pear, rhubarb. A genius combination.

The feast continues with beetroot and blood orange fattoush with black garlic.

Jerusalem artichoke, ras el hanout, miso. This was an intense experience: the sauce is amazingly rich, and stimulates the palate almost too much.

The wine list is short and well chosen, with quite a few low intervention options. Everything is reasonably priced and there’s a wide selection by the glass. We opted for this Loire red, and it was a really good choice. See my note here.