Over the years, one of the questions that I've been asked that pops up now and again is,“Can you recommend any BYOB restaurants in Cardiff?”
I can totally understand why. If you want to have a few drinks whilst you’re out for a meal, then the typical mark-up for wine and beer can make it a seriously expensive endeavour.
At my last time of checking, the places in Cardiff that I would recommend are Vegetarian Food Studio, Sen BBQ and Pim's @ iCookThai. Sadly it looks as though the excellent Ponnuswamy has now closed. Although, it’s been a while since I’ve visited any of them...
But I digress, because this week I’m writing about a BYOB restaurant in Walthamstow, where we happened to be visiting an old university friend of Mrs G.
Etles is an understated place that’s located near Walthamstow Central tube and focuses on Uyghur cooking from the Xinjiang region of northwest China. Due to Xinjiang's location along the ancient Silk Road, Uyghur cuisine incorporates a colourful fusion of influences and utilises spices like cumin, Szechuan pepper and chilli.
I’ve only had Uyghur cooking once before when we were in Munich and fondly remember the cumin spiced meat and elastic hand-pulled noodles which we ate.
On the menu at Etles is a selection of dumplings, hand-pulled noodles, meat skewers and sides.
And to drink, we shared a selection of local Pressure Drop beers and German lagers, with a 20% service charge added to the bill to cover the booze.
We shared a couple of starters between three of us whilst we waited around 30 minutes for our sharing main course to arrive.
Minced lamb filled boiled tugur dumplings (£9.99) were juicy and thin cased if a little light on flavour. However, a big hitting chilli vinegar added plenty of oomph.
Lamb kebabs (£14.99), served on their ornate metal skewers, were commendably tender and had a lovely cumin chilli marinade going on.
Large plate chicken (£39.99), Etles’s house special main dish, most certainly lived up to its no nonsense name. The large plate was laden with plenty of food for three people. It probably could have served four with a few more additional sides.
Elastic thin flat homemade noodles, soft potatoes, toothsome peppers and nuggets of tender chicken on the bone were coating in a mammoth flavoured, warming spiced and meaty sauce with chilli, Sichuan peppercorns, five spice and bay leaf.
On the side a crisp, soft and dense crumbed naan bread (£2.99) topped with nigella seeds was the ideal mop.
We had really tasty, well-priced and laid-back meal of Uyghur cooking at Etles and it’s well worth a visit if you’re ever near Walthamstow - especially if you’re on the hunt for somewhere that’s BYOB.
The details:
Address - Etles, 235 Hoe Street, London E17 9PP
Web - https://etleswalthamstow.com/Home.html
Telephone - 020 3620 6978
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