If my ‘meat-and-two-veg’ husband can enjoy a meal at a veggie restaurant it must be doing something right. It would seem, in fact, that Bubala is doing everything right because just five years after opening in Spitalfields, followed by Soho three years later, it has reached the dizzy heights of a unit in Kings Cross.
“Everything just feels good here,” says owner Marc Summers, and “dizzy heights” is not a euphemism. “The new unit is a really amazing space and I fell in love with the building (Cadence Court, north of the station, near Granary Square) as well. It’s got huge arches, double-height ceiling. For a new development it felt very, very unique.”
A unique unit needs unique food and true to form “the plan with all with our sites is to always have unique dishes. We will be keeping the ‘big hitters’ – the hummus, the halloumi, the mushroom skewers, the confit latkes – but there’s a wood-fired oven so we can do dishes that have got different techniques.” Expect, for example, a take on mejadra(a rice and lentil dish) – it’ll be baked in the wood fired oven so it’s crispy on top – and charred cucumber tzatziki.
The new restaurant, which opens next month, will be on two storeys, with upstairs available for private hire, and a large outside terrace.
Marc Summers
All this from a Chigwell boy who used to work in finance. “I always wanted to be a chef. When I was 25 my brother was living in Australia and I decided to get out of finance, go stay with him and figure out what I wanted to do. And that’s when I started working in in restaurants.”
He fell in love with it. When he came back to London he did a cookery diploma and started working in the kitchen at Berber and Q in East London and then The Palomar in Soho. Next step was to work front of house to learn how to run a restaurant. “I knew I wanted to open a restaurant one day and I wanted to understand it from back to front.”
Next came a series of pop ups all over London before taking a permanent unit on Commercial Street in Spitalfields, near where Marc’s grandma grew up.
Bubala’s new Big Pud desserrt
When Marc was working at Berber and Q – Josh Katz’s grill house that is celebrating its 10th birthday this year – although it is a meat-focused restaurant, he could see that customers were really excited by the vegetable dishes. “Their faces would light up when you talked about the cauliflower shawarma.”
He didn’t want to open “just another Middle Eastern restaurant” and it dawned on him that vegetable dishes were taking centre stage at these restaurants but no-one was doing a veggie-only one.
“When I first suggested the the idea to people they said I was nuts, like, this isn’t going to work. Why would you not have meat on the menu? It’s very limiting. But actually it’s the complete opposite. Everyone can come and eat here – there are very few allergy issues or religious issues.”
Contrary to what you might think, Marc is not vegetarian. “I think being a meat eater helps with textures and sauces and understanding quantities as some people think you can’t fill up on veg in the same way you can with meat. We need diners to feel that this is a real feast.
“Bubala’s style is sharing plates, lots of spices and flavour bombs everywhere – because that’s the way I like to eat. Each of our dishes is a standalone great dish, the best version of itself.”
Confit latkes
You would think, perhaps, that a veggie restaurant would be cheaper than at a meat one. “The unit cost of vegetables is cheaper than meat,” says Marc, “but the work that goes into being creative with vegetables is harder. You can’t just slap them on the grill and that’s your dish. There are a lot of technique involved, and a lot of processes involved to get flavour into a vegetable.
When Marc returned from Australia he lived in Dalston in East London for 10 years. But together with his wife he has slowly made the journey to north London, where she’s from, first to Archway, and now they live in Whetstone with their two young children, aged two and one. She used to work in reservations for the restaurants, but is now very much hands full with the kids. The family is “culturally Jewish – we celebrate all the festivals and Harry goes to a Jewish nursery.”
There’s not much time for cooking at home during the week, but at the weekends Marc is trying to introduce the kids to a love of food with classics such as shepherds pies, burgers and lasagnes – comforting, home-cooked food.
Artists’ impression pf the King’s Cross unit
I wonder how Marc feels about restaurant critics. “We’ve actually had almost everyone review us. The only person who hasn’t is Giles Coren. When we first opened Spitalfields six months before Covid, we got reviewed by Marina O’Loughlin, Jimmy Famurera and Jay Rayner and that definitely gave us a name so we were able to thrive during that time.”
It was on a rare night off for Marc that Jay Rayner came in but “I got a message to say Jay is in the building and I watched it all on CCTV!”
Keeping on top of trends is key and Marc eats out as much as he can to see what’s going on. He makes sure that at least a third of Bubala’s dishes change every season, especially ‘main’ dishes and salads, plus the topping for the Malabi dessert. Talking of dessert, the new unit will be home to Bubala’s Big Pud, a sharing dessert that includes chocolate mousse, brûléed bananas, coconut caramel, tahini, and sesame snaps.
What’s next for the ambitious, affable 36-year-old? “I would love to open in New York. There are some great areas – Williamsburg is amazing and has some great restaurants.”
Bubala would fit in nicely, then.
