Noura Central - The Lebanese chain that's taking off
Whenever I'm near Victoria, I find myself drifting towards the Lebanese quarter for a pick-me-up. It's the ice-cream, you see. The scoops have a dense and creamy texture, not frozen solid and granulated. The intense flavours linger on the palate: rosewater; milk and orange-blossom; mango; ashta (Lebanese clotted cream).
This smart Parisian restaurant chain has been expanding across London and experimenting in each new premises. But now, Noura has gone glam. The latest branch inhabits the premises that used to be Chintamani, and has kept much of same 'modern Ottoman' decor.
Ice-cream is not, of course, the sole reason to visit Noura. Lebanese food is the best of Levantine cooking, with a long tradition of assimilating neighbouring cuisines, then refining them. The Phoenicians were wealthy traders, then their trading ports became part of the Ottoman Empire for long enough to adopt courtly cooking. The result is dishes that are more refined than contemporary Turkish food, and use copious amounts of fresh herbs and vegetables.
I suggest you stick to the mezes, which are more interesting than the grilled meat and fish main courses. The moutabbal is a purée of smoky, grilled aubergines with aromatic sesame oil and piquant lemon juice, best eaten with a basket of mana'eesh (thyme-topped flatbread) hot from the flaming oven. Or there's powerfully-flavoured batrakh, a reminder that it was the Arabs who invented bottarga (salted and dried grey mullet roe). Kebbeh nayeh is lamb tartare, the raw mince so finely chopped it's as smooth as pâté, shaped into a giant, pale-pink corpuscle. There's also plenty of choice for vegetarians, thanks to the large numbers of Lebanese Christians and their meat-free religious festivals.
Original review taken from Time Out.