From next week, visitors to Central London will be able to sit down to kosher afternoon tea in W1.

Owner Lee Landau has confirmed that Reuben’s Café on Baker Street will open its doors next week. The all-day restaurant is a minute’s walk from the site of older sibling Reuben’s, which remains closed after being ravaged by a fire earlier this year.

However, in even better news for kosher diners, Landau also confirmed that the iconic salt beef restaurant is set to reopen in 10 weeks — towards the end of the summer.

After a fire tore through the NY deli style kosher restaurant earlier this year, there’d been a Reubens’ shaped hole in central London’s kosher dining options.

You could enjoy Tony Page’s smart plates with a view at the glamorous Island Grill; or head to Hatton Garden for supervised sabich, falafel and cauliflower shawarma at Balady’s Leather Lane site. But that was it.

With the Ottolenghi-led revolution, Israeli-style food has made it mainstream. You can’t go more than a few yards in Camden Market or East London without being faced with a fully-loaded falafel. And you can pick up a pretty respectable shawarma or crunchy falafel in soft puffy pita served in a paper bag (or posh and plated) in many corners of London.

But there was nowhere in the most central of the city’s postcodes for kosher-keeping diners to go for a comforting bowl of chicken soup and salt beef sandwich. The area had become an Ashkenazic culinary wasteland.
 

Kosher salt beef sandwiches set to return to W1

A sorry situation mirroring the demise of the deli in New York — its spiritual home — where the number of Jewish delicatessens has reportedly shrunk from around 4000 to less than 24 over the last century. It’s even made some of us miss Bloom’s — despite the long-standing institution having been well past its prime by the time it finally closed its doors in 2010.

So, it’s good news that Baker Street’s iconic kosher salt beef servery (which was founded in 1973 and has occupied several sites up and down this stretch) is set to return in only a few months.

And even more pleasing that the brand has evolved to include a younger sibling. Also inspired by New York, the milky kosher café will be offering an all-day menu (eat in or take out) of coffees, juices, smoothies and shakes, with cookies and cakes,fish, pasta dishes and salads plus that fully loaded high tea. 

Speaking to me from the restaurant, Landau said that chefs Hodaya Cohen and Dorit Brand (whose CV’s include a starry list of top Israeli restaurants including Herbert Samuel and Meyer Adoni) will be in the kitchen. “We’ll be making everything from scratch — from cakes to condiments” said Dorit.

And (in an answer to every eight year old’s dreams) the cafe will include a ‘cereal soft serve’ machine that delivers ice cream infused with the flavour of favourite breakfast cereal, Frosties. (Despite being well over eight, I confess that’s definitely at the top of my must-try list.)  

Plus authentic pastel de nata (the delicious custard-filled tarts) made by Portuguese chef, Manuel.

So far as I’m aware — two more firsts for kosher London’s restaurant scene.

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