WE USED to have a Mel Calman cartoon sellotaped above
the cooker showing a harassed woman slaving over a hot stove. The inscription underneath read, simply, 'One man's meat is another woman's Sun- day gone.' It was with these fighting words in mind that I forsook my own hostessly duties, gathered my three Sunday lunch- time guests and took them to Shepherd Market.
The Al Hamra, as the name suggests, is not a meat-and-two-veggerie, but a wonderful Lebanese restaurant where we sat, unhurried, for hours over a tableful of mezze.
Given the baroque tendencies of affluent Lebanese, this is a remarkably restrained sort of place. The proprietor's taste has only got the better of him in the matter of a particularly hideous light-fitting, which hangs from the ceiling like a vast crystal jellyfish. That there are as many tables as possible crammed into the space adds to the jollity. And on Sunday lunchtime the Al Hamra is a jolly place, a place where families gather.
Al Hamra, like all Middle Eastern res- taurants, is made for group eating. The Lebanese have forsaken the concept of the course and pre-empted Knightbridge's chi- chi 'Ménage a Trois' by a couple of millennia with the mezze. There are 43 hors d'oeuvres on the Al Hamra mezze menu (plus the completely unnecessary prawn cocktails and smoked salmon for the Lebanese who want something ethnic) and the four of us got through a good quarter of them.
These we have loved: the Moutabel, baked aubergine puréed with sesame paste, olive oil, garlic and lemon juice and dredged with parsley and pomegranate seeds, so good we had to order a second bowl; tabouleh, a salad of cracked wheat, parsley, tomatoes, onions and mint, though unlike my encounters with this elsewhere, with the emphasis, deliciously, on the parsley rather than, as is more common, the wheat. We braved the Kafta Nayeh, raw ground lamb, oniony and allspiced, moulded into lozenge shapes and trickled with thick olive oil, so rich and beguilingly strange, that I'm afraid we could manage only a little. We slavered over the Batrakh, slivers of smoked cod's roe smothered with slices of garlic and olive oil. And when I say garlic, I mean garlic: the chef puts in as many cloves as will blow the average vampire's head off, and then throws in a couple more for luck. I will never eat taramasalata again: the raw ingredients, unmussed by blender, are so much better. The Lsanat Salateh, lamb's tongue salad, was a gentle antidote, the texture of the just-cooked, thinly sliced tongue as soft and velvety as pâté de foie gras. They were fresh out of brains so the brain salad was off. So was the raw liver. Next time. . . .
And we were only about half way through. From the hot mezze, we had Jaweneh, grilled chicken wings in a gar- licky sauce; the spectacularly good Man- akeish Bizzaatur, soft pizza-like dough speckled with thyme and soused in olive oil; Fatayer, little pastry envelopes stuffed with lemony spinach and onions; Kibbeh Maklieh, lamb ground up with cracked wheat, onions and pine kernels rounded into spinning-top shapes and deep fried; Makanek, hotly spiced red-brown saus- ages; and the best Falafel I have ever had. These deep-fried, egg-shaped mounds of ground chick peas and broad beans, smokey with coriander and cumin, were crisp on the outside, soufflé-light within. Warm rounds of airy Lebanese bread, like deflated footballs, are a constant base, for dipping and mopping.
Even then we were not done. There were the Lebanese puddings: little cigar- shaped rolls, nut-studded and honey soaked, pastry crescents stuffed with dates, rose-scented pastries and triangles of syrupy sponge and a sort of Lebanese baclava, leaves of buttery pastry oozing with custard and topped with a sugary shredded-wheatlike covering. Coffee is ordinary filter or Turkish. Soft drinks are at nightclub prices (£1.50 a shot). I can't report on the wine since the requested wine list never appeared, but a good soupy Lebanese wine, or Arak, would be the thing to drink. This feast came to £69 for four (without service, which, wine list apart, was good). You must book: by the time we were halfway through lunch there was a large crowd at the door waiting for a table, and the waiters will, commendably, not rush anyone to fit more in. Al Hamra: 31/33 Shepherd Market, Lon- don WI. Tel: 01 493 195416934. Open lunch and dinner daily.
Nigella Lawson
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