Babaji, 53 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 6LB

Babaji, 53 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 6LB

www.babaji.com.tr
25/01/2015

She said: Alan Yau founder of Wagamama at one end and Michelin fancy pants Hakkasan at the other has opened a ‘high street’ Turkish joint – be it in the tourist heartland of Soho. I was intrigued enough by the two reviews I read to give it a go. First impressions were good; a lively but small downstairs dining area around an open kitchen and a more open, calm space on the first floor. The blue tiles and dark wood worked for me. The menu had a decent selection of meze, pide (Turkish flatbread pizza) and more main looking dishes. We debated our choices and ordered. First strike – the spinach stew was not available. Given this was one of two vegetarian options by default we switched to the bean stew. I guess there’s a spinach shortage? Next, we ordered three meze’s and the courgette and feta pide. Around 10-15 minutes after ordering we were informed our pide was not available. Strike two. This place supposedly specialises in pide. Guess there’s a courgette shortage too and it takes quarter of an hour for the kitchen to relay that back to the waiter? When I asked why two of the five items we were ordering from the menu were not available, the waiter shrugged and guessed ‘maybe because it is a Sunday’. We switched to a feta and chard pide. Strike three was my pomegranate juice which arrived in a small breakfast juice sized glass – but at a big size price and sour. Sigh. When our three mezes did arrive, they were small portions but good. Not amazing but good. The bean stew was literally beans in a tomato-like juice. The pide, which arrived at the end of our meal was again okay but not the delicate, thin speciality I’ve had elsewhere. And that’s the real problem here. Even if you excuse the mess with the menu (which I don’t), and the higher than average prices (£40 for two), there are far better Turkish joints in London with more choice for less money (such as Ishtar in Marylebone). So, it looks like this one is firmly aimed at the one-time-tourist..

He said: the unveiling of a new Alan Yau concept is always going to be a big deal. There’s hardly a thing that this Midas of the Kitchen hasn’t managed to turn into restaurant gold. This time it’s Turkey’s turn to get Yaud; it may seem like an odd departure from his well-trod East Asian path, but it’s similarly at once exotic and familiar, and allows for some kick ass interior decorating. First impressions are mixed: the interior design is cool, and the waitresses are wearing sweet ethnic threads, but the location’s hardly sexy. Still, neither was the first Hakkasan’s, tucked as it was in a pissey alley behind Tottenham Court Road when it was still heaving with curb crawlers, sex shops and suburban stags and hens on a rampage – but that didn’t stop it going global. What’s most disappointing about Babaji is the lack of ambition: the space is too awkward, spread over four floors of a corner site, to allow the design to really sing; Yau should’ve found one of his usual vast spaces where you can create a real sense of place, and where the beautiful people can preen and prance about. And the food is equally un-ambitious; it was light and, unusually for restaurants, not packed full of salt, sugar, fat and other delights we’re all addicted to. But, honest and pleasant as the food was, it never rose above the standard of a good local. It’s tasty but no-one’s going to walk out of Babaji feeling like they’d been on some magical journey of culinary discovery, which is a shame because Turkey can definitely deliver in that department. It was also very telling that two of the dishes we wanted to order were not available – one of them because they’d run out of this precious and rare gift of the earth: courgettes. I can understand restaurants run out of sole, or urchins, or whatever; but not courgettes, not at the beginning of service, not when you’ve just launched, and not when there’s a Tecos’s 5 minutes’ walk from your gaff. When it comes to attention-to-detail I’ve always thought Yau was a man you could count on, but definitely not this time. He’s set his sights lower than usual and, on our visit at least, taken his eye off the ball. This is why Babaji, although fine, is such a disappointment; it could have been so much better.