Som Saa, 43a Commercial Street, London E1 6BD (020 7324 7790). Limited bookings for four or more. Meal for two including drinks and service: £75-£120
You join me in the smallest room in the house as I sit contemplating one of the biggest pieces of grit in life’s pearly oyster, which is to say consequences. For if my job has taught me anything, it is this: certain ingredients can deliver as much of a kick coming out as they did going in. A few years back one of my so-called rivals concluded a review of an especially spicy Sichuan place with the instruction to put the wet wipes in the fridge overnight. I am wishing now that I had recalled the advice a good 12 hours earlier.
And yet I do not regret a second of my meal at Som Saa. Some eating experiences reveal their virtues like courtroom dramas, the evidence in support of the case building slowly. Others are like romances, the true loving emotion presenting itself in gentle, soothing waves. Dinner at Som Saa – it’s the name of a Thai fruit, apparently – is neither of these. It’s an action movie full of crash, bang and wallop. It’s the friendliest slap around the chops; a throw-you-back-in-your-seat ride which draws you in and spits you out again at the end gasping and, if you’re me, with your collar drenched. In response to chilli I break out in a sweat. At the finish I looked like I’d taken a shower.
Som Saa started life last year as a Thai food pop-up in a filthy east London railway arch, but I didn’t go. Too many pop-ups are people playing at grown-up restaurants, and who knows whether they’ll ever be heard of again? This one, however, was clearly a proof of concept. The chefs, Mark Dobbie and Andy Oliver, cut their teeth with Thai food oracle David Thompson. Oliver later worked in a renowned Bangkok restaurant. Their partner front of house is Tom George, with experience at Hawksmoor and with the Polpo Group, which have together written the textbook on what modern, relaxed restaurant service should look like.
So here they now are, following a crowd-funding campaign, located in a former fabrics warehouse just south of Spitalfields market. Naturally they don’t take bookings, unless for tables of four or more. I thought of inventing a couple of friends I would later mislay so I could reserve, but decided in the end to be a good boy and queue at the bar.
I’m glad I did, because the bar snacks are shamelessly, raucously, look-at-me brilliant. There are addictive bowls of toasted cashews with chilli and kaffir lime leaves, practically smoking in the dish in front of you. Better still is the jan naem – minced pork which has been fermented for four days with garlic and rice until it reaches a meaty lactic sourness. It’s then pressed with fresh chillies and grilled. It is one of the best things ever done to the minced end of a pig. It is sausage in classy hobnail boots.
Certainly, it will take your mind off the noise, which is at aircraft take-off levels. There are distressed brick walls, for the sounds to bounce off, and rock-hard bits of panelling in whatever the eco-alternative to teak is these days. There are metal girders and high ceilings just to make sure the clamour echoes properly. At one point I joked that I was the oldest man in the room. Then I looked about and realised that I really was the oldest man there. Oh, for the sweet, untroubled hearing of the young.
But again, for this food, I’ll take the battering. Abandon any expectations encouraged by the tooth-achingly sweet offerings in Anglo-Thai restaurants. As this magazine reported a couple of months back, there’s a new take on Thai food gaining purchase in Britain right now and it’s a green curry-free zone. The food wanders restlessly from north to south. It is a deliriously fearsome bash of fire and sour and salt and smoke; of the high ethereal waft of Thai basil and lemongrass, of mint and coriander and pungent fish sauces, and their own coconut creams to lend soothing depths where needed.
On the specials board is a duck soup, complete with the offals. It is the worrying colour of dish water, an uncompromising grey; but it is the flavour of Technicolor, all hot and sour loveliness of a sort which would make a heavy cold simply throw up its hands and shout, “Sod it, I surrender.”
We follow it with a whole sea bass, curved round on itself in the heat of a deep-fat fryer, until the bones are crisp enough to be nibbled as a snack. It’s buried under drifts of foliage and smokey chillies, the crunch of toasted rice and the intensity of more fish sauce. From the same section headed simply “wok” comes a perfect mess of crisp-roasted belly pork with sliced snake beans in a thick, dry red curry that shouts at you and shouts at you again until you have spooned up every last smear. The only step on to almost familiar ground is a slightly sweeter Penang curry of salted beef cheeks, cooked until spoonable, which with its dollop of coconut has edges of a massaman about it, but with more serious and savoury intent. Note: don’t drop these down your shirt, or your clothes will recall your dinner for as long as you do.
A salad of prawn, pork, peanuts and Asian pennywort, dressed with glugs of lime juice and – but of course – more fish sauce, is like a breath of cool air after hours in the sun. It is bright and fresh but still, of course, has a chilli kick. Once more the sweat runs. I mop my brow.
Apart from a fruit plate there are just two desserts. A salted palm sugar ice cream with toasted bananas is a revelation, full of deep caramel tones; it’s what salted caramel wants to be when it grows up. A heavily set duck-egg custard served with crispy shallots is startlingly weird, verging on the unpleasant. The custard is split and, while I imagine it’s a Thai combination, I could happily live without having onions on my dessert ever again.
Prices range from £6.50 to £16 for the whole fish, but what struck me was that I could slip in here alone, just for the duck soup or the crispy pork dish or the beef cheek curry. And some of the fermented pork. That and a beer and I’d be very happy. And yes, I’d pay for it the next morning. But really, who cares?
Jay’s news bites
■ Jane-Tira, a Thai restaurant in London’s Soho, is a canteen-like space which has become famous for one particular dish: a mackerel curry made with fermented fish guts. If the decision to eat was based solely on smell you wouldn’t; think a cross between a drain and the fishmongers at day’s end. But it tastes terrific. There are many other good things, too, including the thrillingly named ‘son-in-law balls’: deep- fried eggs with tamarind sauce (jane-tira.co.uk).
■ Fergus Henderson of St John is relaunching his brilliant product Trotter Gear. A mixture of long-cooked shredded trotters with aromatics, in a deeply reduced gravy spiked with Madeira, it does wonders to any stew. They’re also making a Welsh rarebit mix. Both available via Ocado.
■ The Hilton Hotel in Cardiff is to launch a new upmarket restaurant. After what I’m sure was much feverish consultation they’ve decided to call it Grey. Accordingly, the menu includes such items as the Grey Croque Monsieur.
Jay Rayner’s new book, The Ten (Food) Commandments, is out now (£6, Penguin). To order a copy for £5.10, go to bookshop.theguardian.com
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
