Levante, 11 Lewis Grove, London SE13 6BG (020 8355 3522). Starters £5-£11, mains £11-£19, desserts £4.95-£5.50, wines from £17
I am standing in front of a corrugated shutter in Lewisham, southeast London, thinking about what might have been. Behind this shutter is a one-time caff, a venerable greasy spoon if you will, that once traded in the holy trinity of egg, chips and beans, alongside steaming mugs of tea the colour of a Caramac bar. Recently it was taken over by the Italian Antonio Delicatessen next door. It’s still a caff, only now one with a strong Italian accent, utilising the ingredients stocked by the mothership.
We mourn the passing of greasy spoons and with good reason. They are vital third spaces; community hubs that feed more than just our bellies. But they are too easily defined by menu. There are one-time greasy spoons serving cheap Greek Cypriot, Chinese and Thai food. This one could still be true to its origins, even with a ragù-splattered menu. It’s about intent, not recipes. Anyway, all this ethnographic guff is irrelevant, because for reasons described as “unforeseen”, it’s closed. It’s a flinty, brooding word, that. Good things are rarely described as unforeseen and certainly not ones that lead to the three-week closure of a business. My thoughts are with everybody involved with Antonio Caffe & Restaurant in Lewisham. I will return another time. And for those wondering, it doesn’t have a website let alone a fancy online booking widget. There was no reason to call, so its closure was unforeseen to me, too.
Here am I, then, amid the rumble and chunter of Lewisham’s traffic on a cold winter’s day beneath a 3B-pencil-lead sky. I am with a couple of friends, their delicious baby daughter and have both a deadline and nowhere to eat. I bash away at Google Maps. I blink at the digital ink of red knives and forks, and click furiously on descriptions. I get excited when I spot a nearby South African restaurant. That sounds interesting. Oh, hang on. It’s a Nando’s. There is, of course, a Burger King, a Greggs and a Subway, the three popes of the British high street. I am no longer a food professional, patrolling the waterfront of British dining, an eyebrow raised. I’m just a bloke on the hunt for lunch on a cold winter’s day.
Then I look up from my phone. According to the map in my hand, there’s a Turkish place just 20m away called Levante. Indeed there is. I’d walked past its bright red frontage and not even noticed. This is the best kind of news. When I am travelling the country and know I’ll need dinner late at night, I generally search first for Turkish grill houses. This is because they are never bad. This may look like a grand statement, but I hold by it. Some may be better than others. But I’ve never been to one that didn’t deliver on the fundamentals: bright fresh salads; puffy, charred breads; smoky grills. Basically, all the good things, which in turn make you feel good about yourself. I suspect this is because, just like the greasy spoon, they too are third spaces. They are places where Turkey’s various communities gather, which means there is no room to be lazy or bad.
Cheerily, Levante proves the rule. It really is great. Being so, it would be churlish of me not to tell you about it. There’s a charcoal grill at the front, enclosed behind glass and beaten-out aluminium. Smoke pirouettes upwards from the coals and the warm air smells of caramelising onions, freshly baked bread and gently charring lamb. It’s a long, simple room with a cafeteria vibe, half wood-panelled, white above, and hung with a few bold paintings of the old country. The tables are fake marble Formica-style and the chairs are solid and comfortable. A TV screen dangles from the ceiling, presumably for when Galatasaray does its thing. At the end, enclosed in a faux wooden country cabin, complete with sloping roof, is the bar. It’s an outbreak of shameless kitsch amid the functional.
Turkish food is accidentally custom-engineered as a response to the question, “Have you got any dietaries?” It does animal and vegetable with equal enthusiasm. From the list of cold meze we have shredded green beans, marinated in a deep sauce of tomato, herbs and garlic. There’s the sour hit of sumac and sparkling green pools of peppery olive oil. Aubergines are roasted until soft, sweet and messy. More of the aubergine turns up as a topping for a hot-crusted bready canoe of pide. There’s also a bowl of herb-speckled lentil soup on our table, there to tell the weather outside where to stick it. The soup is thick, cumin-spiked and a deep colour that Dulux might name Burnt Orange, and Farrow & Ball would call Charlotte’s Locks. The grills include a kebab of slumping onions, aubergines and mushrooms generously swamped in a long-reduced tomato sauce.
From the keto side of the dietaries, we have chicken livers, grilled until crusty, but seared quickly enough to save them from becoming dry. Then there are the salty-sweet, crisply fatted lamb ribs. These are sliced across the middle to create more surface area and happily lubricate the surrounding heaps of rice with tributaries of liquid fats. Cut through all that with a forkful of shredded red cabbage, doused with olive oil and lemon. Play culinary Russian roulette with the pickled green pepper. Or try some of the grilled sea bream, opened out so the pale flesh has bronzed and crisped.
Desserts are on a shiny, laminated menu that suggests they are brought in. They insist the kunefe is made on site. Honestly, it’s so good I don’t care where it comes from. Noodle-like shredded pastry is packed into a metal dish and layered with sweet, stringy cheese, which is then covered with more of the shredded wheat-like pastry. It’s baked until golden and crisp, then doused in syrup. Oh God. Order a Turkish coffee to defend against well-earned droop and drowsiness.
This is my second accidental meal in Lewisham in recent months, the other being at the Sri Lankan Everest Curry King, which has gone through a few changes since I drooled over it last year. Some of the locals are cross about that. I doubt Levante will change. It does its great-value thing and it does it very well indeed. On a cold winter’s day, it was restaurant not just as refuge, but as happy find. I left invigorated, fed and very grateful.
News bites
Over Christmas, the nation rejoiced as I stormed to victory in the critics’ episode of MasterChef. Now you can bid to have me come to your house and cook all the MasterChef-winning dishes for you: that’s the spare ribs with cumin, salt and chilli with a cucumber salad, the seafood fregola and the baked chocolate and cherry pudding. All proceeds from the winning bid will go to support the vital work of The Food Chain, a small London charity giving nutritional advice and support to people with HIV, of which I am a patron. The dinner is for up to eight people, at a venue within the M25 on a date to be mutually agreed and bidding, via eBay, closes on 11 February at 6pm. To bid go here.
The Rectory in Crudwell, Wiltshire, has appointed the former head chef of Bocca di Lupo, in London, to run their kitchens. Jake Simpson, who has also worked with Jeremy Lee at the Blueprint Café and Quo Vadis, has put together a new menu, including egg yolk raviolo, with bottarga butter, venison haunch with faggot and pickled prune and a pistachio cake with quince. Back in Soho, Gareth Saywell, who was previously head chef at Orasay, has replaced Simpson as head chef at Bocca di Lupo (therectoryhotel.com).
Jonny Farrell, an award-winning Lancashire-based butcher, is opening his own restaurant in Birkdale Village, Stockport. Butcher Farrell’s Bar & Grill, which opens later this month, will feature steaks from heritage breeds including Longhorns and Belted Galloways. Follow them on Instagram @butcherfarrellsbarandgrill
Email Jay at [email protected] or follow him on X @jayrayner1