Appetite for memories: Limor Chen and her husband Amir[Missing Credit]
The pair told me they’d spent two years looking for their third restaurant.
“Our vision had been a big open space on one floor with a terrace” confesses Limor. “Our other restaurants were divided into separate spaces, and we wanted this one to be different.”
Number 13 Tavistock Street ticked none of their boxes. But they agreed to visit the three storey house and fell in love with it.
“I thought we can make it beautiful and do what we wanted to do here” she smiles adding that they loved the history of the Central London theatre district. “You make [your site] work with the area in which it’s located. Covent Garden has the theatre and the chance to make it a bit more special — a proper outing.”
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To the Chens, this is an extension of their home. “We’ve poured so much love and attention into it. It’s a very personal space — not something you can buy off the shelf. It’s all bespoke to us with a lot of time, love and attention put into it” Limor told me.
Walls are neutral coloured walls and huge windows allow plenty of natural light — giving an almost Mediterranean feel.
At street level, there’s a small bar and, at the back of the dining rooms, the terracotta-hued ‘Big Snug’. This area is complete with plush banquette seating behind and a small row of tables. Draw the heavy curtain and you’ve got a cosy private dining area.
Upstairs — past black and white family photos from the couple’s ancestors including Amir’s family from Uruguay and Limor’s on their kibbutz — are two more dining areas. In the ‘arts room’ the vibe is more (smart) dinner party than restaurant dining room. Fireplaces (which the building’s listed status required to be be left intact) give a homely feel and the room is lined with works of art. There are artfully arranged piles of books, sculptures, plants and a huge canvas created by Limor especially for this space which covers an entire wall.
Up a couple of steps is another dining room that can be booked for private dining — also with a curtain for privacy. The venue is an ideal spot for a Central London party.
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I was there not to party but for lunch a deux with my teenage son — a post GCSE mock reward for us both. The endless nagging is exhausting.
Amir offered to order for us from a menu that is classic Delamina in feel but with almost three quarters of it newly created for the Townhouse. It still retains their trademark fresh colourful food packed with Middle Eastern/Eastern Mediterranean flavours and a few of the favourites that regulars would be disappointed to miss.
Limor told me she had wanted to bake in her restaurants from day one. "I’ve loved baking since I was a teenager but we did not have enough kitchen space before”.
Here they have had a kitchen large enough to allow her to add more baked items to the menu including a brioche-light kubaneh — which my son pronounced the best bread he had ever eaten. The mini loaf arrived with little pots of tahini topped with spicy zhug; tomato salsa and smokey aubergine to dip it in.
Our other starters included leek, feta and sundried tomato croquettes that were crisp on the outside with a salty soft heart. Golden crispy oyster mushrooms with truffled artichokes could have sat nicely along some of the more abstract art.
More of the small plates were equally good. Courgette two ways were amazingly rich and sweet, and the kohlrabi carpaccio was a revelation. The root vegetable (crunchy in its raw state) was cut into fat slices cooked to a smooth buttery and almost meaty texture — perfect scattered with feta and crunchy pistachios.
Arak-cured chalk stream trout didn’t give much in the way of the liquor’s trademark aniseed kick but was probably better off for it. Limor’s a fan of healthy eating and the fish sat on a saintly bed of nutritionists’ favourite, quinoa with some delicately pickled cucumber.
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From the larger plates section, Amir delivered a whole crisp sea bass. A fish served whole is a gamble. Too often you’re looking your lunch in the eye and then you need to morph into surgical mode to remove those tricky bones. The Delamina version is none of these things, what with them having ingeniously deboned it but then managed to somehow make it look not only whole but attractive, filled with fat parsley leaves and juicy pomegranate arils. Sticky chilli-date molasses kept things fresh.
Crispy rosemary potatoes – ordered at my son’s request were crunchy, salty and pleasingly golden and all we needed after our huge mezze of the smaller ‘mix and match’ dishes.
They’ve a decent wine list included a couple of Israeli bottles — a Jezreel Valley Argaman and Dalton’s Wild One Chenin Blanc, although they are at the upper end of the price range.
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My son wouldn’t dream of leaving a table without dessert. The list is short but both the richly decadent olive oil chocolate mousse and Limor’s deconstructed cheesecake on its nest of crunchy kadaif pastry hit the spot.
This new Delamina offspring is every bit as delicious as its siblings and probably my favourite of the dining rooms. I’ll have to go back several times to choose which area is my favourite — so I can sulk if I’m not seated there in future.
Delamina Townhouse
