Zawa, Cardiff city centre, Middle Eastern street food review

If you’ve ever visited St Nick’s Market in Bristol then there’s a very good chance you’ll have come across Matina.

In case you need a primer, it’s a Middle Eastern food stall that sells delicious kebab wraps and salads; there’s always been a hefty queue outside it whenever I’ve visited; and it can be identified by the ridiculously large mountains of colourful salad that sit on its counter. If they get through that much salad every day, then they must be selling a serious number of kebabs.

Anyway, I’ll get to the point… Cardiff now has its own answer to Matina in the form of Zawa.

Located in Cardiff City Centre’s Hayes Island, Zawa is owned by cousins of the team behind Matina. They’ve clearly taken Bristol’s winning formula and transferred it over the Severn Bridge.

The first giveaway are those distinctive summits of salad, which are more Mount Snowdons compared to Bristol’s Everests.

Much like its cousin, Zawa offers a compact menu of naan wraps and salad boxes that are filled with a choice of chargrilled meat or halloumi.

With everything costing between £5.90 and £8.50, it’s the kind of thing you could eat on a regular basis without feeling too spenny.

On a Monday lunchtime, a queue formed soon after we’d placed our order at 1pm and we overheard a regular lamenting that the line will be too big if they become much more popular.

Wanting to try Zawa’s two key dishes, I ordered the mixed chicken and lamb salad box with rice (£8.50) whilst Mrs G ordered the mixed naan wrap (£8.50). As all the meat was cooked to order, there was about a ten-minute wait for it to be ready.

My hefty salad box was a riot of colour and flavour and a substantial meal for a growing man like me (I’m referring to my waistline, of course). Golden edged pieces of saffron stained chicken shish and well-herbed and juicy lamb kofte were sat on a generous pile of fluffy, cardamom fragranced rice. Fresh as you like salads included fresh mixed leaves, zingy red cabbage and lightly pickled white cabbage.

Homemade sauces showed a level of attention to detail that sets Zawa apart from the average kebab shop. There was tzatziki stacked with green herbs; hot and smoky harissa; sweet chilli that deftly avoided cloying sweetness; thick hummus; and a pomegranate jewelled salad dressing.

Mrs G ordered the mixed chicken and lamb naan, and it scored a two on the guinea pig scale i.e. it was the size of approximately two guinea pigs.

Essentially the same as my salad box but with a freshly made, soft, crisp and elastic naan instead of rice, it was an absolute belter of a kebab. Every mouthful contained a good mix of meat, salad, bread and sauce.

Lunch at Zawa was lush and cracking value for the quality and portions. It’s probably only a matter of time before they build up a cult following to rival Bristol’s Matina. The only thing going against them is the Welsh weather and the fact there’s nowhere to queue under shelter when it inevitably rains. Still, if it means the wait will be shorter, I’ll be packing my waterproofs.

The Details:

Address - Zawa, The Hayes Island, Cardiff CF10 1AH

Web - https://www.instagram.com/zawa.cardiff/

Telephone - 07472 747454

Sôs, Cardiff pop-up restaurant review

Sauces are often the underrated MVP of a plate of food. Bringing everything together whilst providing balance, acidity, levity or decadence, they’re regularly what differentiates a good dish from a great dish.

Whether it’s gravy, bearnaise, curry, hollandaise or ketchup, sauces deserve just as much of the plaudits as a slab of meat or a pile of potatoes. 

So, the fact that Sôs, Cardiff’s newest pop-up have given sauces the spotlight in their name is nice to see. 

Either that, or Sôs is a mayday call to save the UK’s hospitality scene, which seems to be constantly lurching from crisis to the next. 

Sôs is owned by business and real-life partners Rhodri Davies and Ri Meredith, who have both worked in some of Cardiff’s most high-profile kitchens, including the Heathcock and Heaney’s. Most recently, Ri was most part of the team to establish Ember as one of Cardiff’s best new recent openings whilst Rhodri has headed up the kitchen at Bodega in Lakeside. 

Having decided to strike out on their own with Sôs, Rhodri and Ri have been running pop-ups at Alex Gooch on Whitchurch Road since the end of September. 

When we saw that they were planning a collaboration weekend with the excellent State of Love and Trust in Lakeside, it gave us the impetus we needed to book a table. One of Cardiff’s best wine and beer shops, you can always rely on State to serve up delicious booze. 

£95 per person bought us a six-course menu with six tasting pours of wine - a fair price considering we've paid £75 for just a wine flight in a couple of restaurants this year.

As expected, Nat from State of Love and Trust had chosen an interesting selection of wines that each worked extremely well with their paired dish. What made the evening all the more enjoyable was Nat’s storytelling about the background to each wine and the rationale for why he had selected the pairing. 

Dinner started off strong with a posh take on chips and sauce. High end fried stuff is always the way to my heart. Super crisp and golden halves of sweet and earthy Jerusalem artichoke were dusted with savoury seaweed and accompanied by a dollop of sharp and fiery hot sôs that was tempered by thick and creamy smoked crème fraiche. The nuttiness of a glass of flor-influenced Hogan “The Lift” South African Chenin Blanc was the ideal foil. 

Next up was cuttlefish, a dish which can so easily be chewy in the wrong hands. Fortunately, a swift cook meant that it was as tender as it could possibly be with nicely caramelised edges. Soft and sweet burnt leeks and the anise hit of tarragon oil completed a light yet whopping flavoured dish. This time, a fragrant Flowergirl Albariño was another corker of a pairing. 

Onto the meat dishes, and pork belly and its paired wine were the standout of the night for me. A nudgingly tender whorl of belly with melting fat had been slow-cooked in Gwynt Y Ddraig dry cider before being scattered with nuggets of crisp crackling. Both accompanying sauces were belters - a rich and buttery sauce made using the reduced cooking liquor and a balancing sweet and sharp apple caramel puree. Domaine Sylvain Pataille Aligote, a creamy and decadent Burgundy white, held up extremely well against the rich meat. 

Venison was perhaps the most traditional looking of the dishes we ate but it was still delicious. A ruby red hunk of gamey meat was served alongside a disc of confit turnip whose flavour had been amped up by cooking it in beef fat. A glossy meat sauce, fragrant and zingy plum puree and almost Bovril-esque black garlic puree all brought something different to the dish. A raspberry-packed Peitro Caciorgna Etna Rosso was another top drawer a pairing. 

Sôs’s baked cream is most certainly part of the same branch of the family tree as a Basque cheesecake. A mound of smooth, thick and tangy vanilla-fragranced baked cream had compelling toasty and caramelised notes that worked exceptionally well with a sweet sherry poached pear, the crunch of roasted pecans and the acidity of a pear puree. Bodegas Cesar Florido Cream sherry, the same booze as which the pear was poached in, was a smooth, sweet and raisin-y accompaniment. 

Finally, the bonus course was a bonne bouche of aerated white chocolate topped with a blob of sharp blackberry puree. Tasty as it was, the booze pairing was the star of this course for me. A mixed berry mead from the acclaimed Superstition Meadery in Arizona had a brilliant fruit intensity and balancing acidity. 

We had a hell of a good meal from Sôs accompanied by some belting wines from State of Love and Trust. Rhod and Ri’s cooking combines big comforting flavours with bang-on technique, and I look forward to seeing what they’ve got planned next for Sôs. In the meantime, they're still popping up at Alex Gooch on Friday and Saturday nights until just before Christmas. 

The Details:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sos_with_a_hat/
Booking: Google Docs form