Restaurants

By Michela Wrong

The owners are Eritrean, the cooks Yemeni, the muzak Ethiopian. With its plastic table covers, a bar whose bleakness carries a whiff of Cold War-era austerity – no licence to sell alcohol, hence no bottles – and an eccentric choice of decor embracing Eritrean peasant scenes, the legendary Sanaa skyline and a giant view of Westminster Bridge, the Red Sea cheerfully dispenses with any attempt at urban sophistication. No-frills, pretension-free and family-friendly, this feels like the Horn of Africa equivalent of a transport caff.

If you want wine and haven’t thought to bring your own – most customers, knowing the score, come clutching a bottle – you are helpfully pointed to the grocery shop next door. There’s no attempt to charge corkage and drinks are then served in the kind of stumpy, shatter-proof water glasses that used to be given away in petrol stations. The service is somewhat absent-minded, and for those who don’t know their way around the dishes of the region, there’s not a great deal of explanation on offer.

The food makes its own case, ranging confidently over the classics of Horn of Africa and Middle Eastern cuisine. Our choice of awaze tibs (lamb cooked in a spicy tomato sauce), shiro (pureed chickpeas), and a range of vegetarian Orthodox ‘fasting foods’ – spinach, potato and lentils – all up-ended as tradition dictates on a springy bed of injera dough, was cooked with pleasing, unexpected delicacy.

The bill alone puts this restaurant, which has yet to be discovered by London’s Anglo-Saxon population, in a league of its own. When presented, it was so absurdly, insanely modest it caused a sharp intake of breath and an explosion of disbelieving hilarity at our table. Red Sea’s owners must eventually realise their prices are crazily out of kilter with what every other London eating establishment currently charges. Make the most of this period of blissful ignorance while it lasts.

Time Out Issue 1978: July 17-23 2008