Former Kiln head chef Meedu Saad this week opened his first solo restaurant – Impala in Dean Street, Soho, an eagerly anticipated grill inspired by cooking from North London to North Africa.
Born and brought up in Tottenham to an Egyptian father, Meedu spent his early summers near Ismailia on the Red Sea coast. The restaurant takes its name from the cherry red 1964 Chevrolet Impala the family drove there – not from the species of antelope which lives further south in Africa.
Meedu says he has been developing the new project for five years, taking in influences from a lifetime of cooking – and even a fermentation recipe from a 14th-century Egyptian cookbook.
“Growing up, I saw river fish baked in bran around the community ovens in Ismailia, opened clams over small fires along the beaches of the Red Sea and watched spit roast sheep turning in smoke filled Cypriot kebab houses in Haringey. All these memories are carried through into our cooking today.”
The restaurant has an open fire grill offering dishes such as baked river fish, spit-roast mutton, grilled sea bass and bream prepared using the Japanese preservation method ike jime. There is also a wood oven for slow-roasting lamb and mutton from a farm on Exmoor, along with rice baked with ghee in clay pots.
The space has been designed with Kiln founder Ben Chapman and Dan Preston, the man behind the design of Kiln, Smoking Goat and Brat – its highly rated stablemates in Brian Hannon’s Super 8 Restaurant group, which is now set to expand via the new Super 10 Restaurants.
