Sohaila, London: ‘It’s charming, the food is great’ – restaurant review

Sohaila, 232 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6PJ. Small plates £4-£9, larger plates £11-£15, desserts £7, wines from £32

We live in desperate times. The Nusr-Et Steakhouse in Knightsbridge, famed for its hyper-expensive gold leaf-wrapped steaks has, according to the hospitality industry website Code, had to abandon using gold leaf. Just as with chickpeas and vegetable oil, there are supply-chain issues. So now they’re just flogging stupidly expensive steaks without any precious metals at all. Where’s the joy in that? They don’t even have that Salt Bae bloke, the one with the shades and the signature salting move, like Rod Hull’s Emu, “bare naked and disgracing himself by vomiting down his own neck” (yes, I’m quoting myself; I can’t improve upon that). He’s at one of his 15 other restaurants, where they are still pointlessly, performatively wrapping steaks in gold leaf so rich people can hate themselves just a little bit more.

But hang on. It’s not all gloom. A new Mayfair joint has opened with the proud announcement that its menu will include a dish costing £3,000. Apparently, it involves a bucket load of caviar with a brooding sense of inadequacy on the side. I’m not naming the place, or the chef or the PR company responsible for promoting it, because that’s exactly what they want. All three should be utterly ashamed of themselves. And if they’re not, no worries because I’m ashamed of them.

Stories like this can make you despair of the restaurant sector. What’s it for exactly? So let’s have something to restore a little faith which doesn’t involve gold leaf or caviar or a bloated lack of regard for anything costing less than a grand. Fat Macy’s is a social enterprise which tackles problems of homelessness by offering work placements and traineeships in the hospitality industry to people who need help getting out of temporary accommodation. I’ve mentioned them in my “news bites” section online a couple of times. They have an outside catering business, enabling their clients to work both alongside chefs in the kitchen and out front with customers. It’s a programme that helps them access the grants they need to pay rent deposits on a permanent home.

Now they have their own rather lovely restaurant and wine bar. It’s in London’s Shoreditch and is called Sohaila, after the grandmother of the charity’s chief executive, Nathalie Moukarzel. “We use her recipes for a lot of our dishes,” she told me, simply. It has a short Middle Eastern menu, because this is Shoreditch and they know exactly what people like around here and generally it involves sumac and tahini. The kitchen is headed by Doug Rolle, who used to work at Brawn, which is a bit weird because that’s the third time in just over a month that I’ve had cause to mention Brawn. Perhaps it’s a conspiracy.

Sohaila is a compact space. At lower ground there’s a high communal table, occupied the night I was there by a hooting, stomping party of properly lubricated happy souls. Up above, there’s a wine store at the front which will eventually house 100 labels, available both to drink here or take home. Then there’s the low-ceilinged dining room with bare floorboards, whitewashed brick walls and a casual “do what you like” vibe.

It’s not the quietest of spaces. Sound echoes and clangs. But if you’ve come to Shoreditch looking for a cloister, you’ve made a serious wrong turn, probably at Holborn. What matters is the sprightliness of the food and the cheeriness with which it is delivered. None of the dishes will startle you, but they are all very good examples of their type. There’s an almost frothy lightness to the whipped taramasalata, sprinkled with some of that citrussy sumac, the dusting of purple a vivid contrast to the pink. It comes with crunchy radishes and leaves of crisp caraway seed cracker.

There’s a big, heaped salad of Vesuvius tomatoes with golden fried shards of flat bread, much like a fattoush. Lightly roasted artichokes and friggitelli peppers come on a thick puddle of seasoned tahini. Naturally, there is a big round bowl of coarse smoky hummus, its central well filled with pungent, fresh green olive oil and more chickpeas. This is before the chickpea shortage has been announced and we eat it with the casualness of those who think there will always be hummus. From the larger dishes there is a tagine of the most tender rabbit, practically floating on the waft of cinnamon with, alongside it, a herby bulgur wheat pilaf. Only mushroom shish barak, filled pouches of slightly heavy pasta with spiced yoghurt, feels out of place; it’s a wintery dish amid the sunshine. Pricing for all this is exceptionally inviting, with no large dish costing more than £15 and the smaller plates coming in at around £7.

Which is helpful, given the wine. Both the list and the growing bottle shop is referred to as a “library”. That’s a troubling use of language. I can promise you that if I withdraw one of those bottles it’s not coming back, or if it does it won’t contain the same liquid it went out with. And because it’s Shoreditch in 2022, it’s all natural and quirky. That’s fine, because I’ve now learned how to say, “Give me something that doesn’t have back notes of sewer,” without sounding aggressive. The wine is overseen by Alexandros Vainas, who used to be at Morito. He’s an engaging and enthusiastic guide. He takes my resistance in his stride and finds us a slightly effervescent rosé from Spain. The problem is that this commitment to quirky wineries comes at a cost. There’s nothing on the list below £32. Most of it is £40 or well above. It unbalances the price of the experience. They need to add a few bottles accessible to those on tighter budgets.

Because, in a restaurant sector that really can be full of badly polished turds, somewhere like Sohaila deserves to flourish. It’s charming, the food is great and at its heart is a noble purpose. I have no idea whether I was served by any of the Fat Macy’s trainees. It would be rather missing the point to highlight their journey to the side of my table. All I know is that, at the end, we were fed a ludicrously rich chocolate mousse topped by an outrageous tahini caramel with walnuts for crunch, and a lemon posset, beneath a lake of gorgeous raspberry coulis. We drank our rosé and gave thanks that amid all the clumsy, pathetic PR stunts, there can still be restaurants like Sohaila.

News bites

The restaurant industry charity Hospitality Action has announced a major fundraiser in Liverpool this autumn. The four-course dinner, on 7 November at the Hilton Liverpool, will be cooked by four big name chefs from the northwest: Ellis Barrie of Lerpwl, Aiden Byrne of the Church Green, Paul Leonard of the Forest Side and Tom Parker of the White Swan. Tickets, which include drinks and canapés and wine with the meal, are £130 each. Book here.

It seems a little rotten to pass on bad news about Birmingham when it is the focus of such a celebration of sport, but sometimes I am merely the reporter. A study of data from the Food Standards Agency has found the city had the highest proportion of restaurants with poor scores under the hygiene rating scheme, with 11% of restaurants and takeaways having just one or two stars. Second worst was Southend-on-Sea with 7% followed by Westminster. Ipswich is the most hygienic, with 100% of establishments scoring four or five stars.

The southwest-based seafood restaurant group Rockfish has announced plans to add three more outposts to the eight-strong collection. Alongside the previously announced Rockfish in Salcombe, there will be sites in Sidmouth and Topsham. They have also acquired two of their suppliers to help streamline the supply chain, and have dropped cod from their menus in favour of native species. Visit therockfish.co.uk.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1