Monday 2 December 2013

E. Mono: follow the kebab shop light

Last night a kebab saved my life.


So last night I had the best kebab I have ever had.

A kebab is many things to many people. To some it's the crowning glory of a night out, others the silver lining as you call time on a terrible one. To some it's sobering, to others it's nauseating. Sometimes it ends up being dinner, occasionally the remainder ends up being breakfast too. But it is one thing to all of those people - still just a kebab.

E. Mono has the great honour of being one of Giles Coren's five favourite restaurants. Given that half of them fall within two miles of his home, it's possible that geography figures highly in his decision, but don't let that distract you. E. Mono, with its quaint Victorian signage and smiling chefs, make great kebabs to drunks. They make their own wraps, saving us from the terminally shit pittas that cost-cutting kebab houses stick to. You even get floury fingers. Floury fingers! In a kebab shop!

But it's their meat when the difference is most noticeable. Their lamb may come off an upright spike next to your Gran's electric radiator, but the meat is juicy, tasty and gorgeously caramelised and burnt around the edges. It must be great sourcing, because the methods are the same. The sticky, sweet flavour just cuts right through the watery salad and slightly crispy flatbread. It fills your nose and mouth with flavour and cracks your mouth into that drunken, dribbling smile your friends know so well and you only see in blurred Facebook photos.

I was going to say "Imagine if all kebab houses were like this", But we shouldn't have to. They all should be already. I paid £4.95 for my medium lamb shawarma. No more and n less than any other kebab I've ever ordered. So why can't other places do it?

Screw it. Imagine if they did.