Inside Impala’s First Week in Soho

Impala is only four days into service when we walk through its doors in Soho, and yet the restaurant already carries the confidence of somewhere that’s been open for years.

From the moment my sister and I slip inside at opening time, hoping to land two walk-in seats, we’re met with an ease that settles us. Water appears, coats are taken. We’re shown to the counter by the wood oven as though we’ve always belonged there.

The wood fire glows in front of us, steady and hypnotic, and everything seems to orbit around it.

This is Meedu Saad’s first solo restaurant, and if his name sounds familiar, it should. He spent eight years at the helm of Kiln, shaping it into one of Soho’s most compelling kitchens.

So we should be in for a good dinner.

Quick info on Impala Soho

• Restaurant: Impala
• Location: Soho, London
• Cuisine: North African, charcoal-led
• Must order: Aish Baladi, duck, raw brill
• Skip: Langoustine kibbeh, blanched greens
• Price: around £100 pp
• Booking: Already extremely difficult. Easier to get an early walk in table.

Read the full Impala restaurant review to find out more.

A menu rooted in North Africa, filtered through London

Meedu Saad draws on summers spent in Egypt – fishing, grilling, driving a cherry-red 1964 Chevrolet Impala – and filters those memories through classical French kitchens and eight years at Kiln.

There are breads from the wood oven that anchor the meal in tradition. There are newer things too, like the raw brill with mashua root and wild honey. And then there are the bigger plates, like the beef shortrib or the duck roasted in molasses. 

The overall feeling is that it’s a tightly curated menu, where each dish carries intent.

Portion-wise, Impala strikes a balance. The plates aren’t oversized or particularly generous, nor are they meagre. The raw brill, for instance, isn’t a vast carpaccio stretching edge to edge, but there’s just enough for two people to taste properly and appreciate before moving on.

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Bread, egg and immediate joy

We begin with Aish Baladi, pulled moments earlier from the fiery wood oven we’ve been watching at work.

The bread arrives puffed and blistered, its crust lightly charred, its interior hollowed by steam.

When we tear it open, it resists slightly before yielding, revealing a chewy crumb that tastes deeply of grain. It’s best when dragged through the olive oil streaked with harissa.

Then comes the Ftira.

On the menu it’s described as fried bread, yet what arrives is closer to a savoury, flattened doughnut crowned with a perfectly cooked egg and generous swathes of harissa.

As we cut into it, yolk spills wantonly across the surface, pooling in the folds of fried dough and demanding to be scooped up with the leftover baladi.

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Don’t skip the fish at Impala

The raw brill with mashua root and wild honey shifts the momentum of the meal in a nice way. It is cool where the bread was warm, restrained where the Ftira was indulgent.

The sweetness of honey is tempered by savoury garum, and the mashua root brings gentle spice and texture. It’s a dish that demonstrates control and nuance.

Then the monkfish arrives, wrapped in grape leaves and grilled over coals. It’s just-cooked and has a wonderful bounce and tenderness.  

The grape leaves encase the fish but don’t dominate it, and the accompanying tabbouleh provides brightness and texture. It’s a dish that feels considered from every angle.

The duck is a masterclass in fire and fat

And then there’s the duck, which has to be the best thing to order from the Impala menu.

It’s been dry-aged, brined, stuffed with black lime and molasses, and hung over embers so that its fat renders slowly and its juices drip into a pan below, later pressed into sauce.

It’s then crisped in the oven until the skin turns a deep, lacquered mahogany.

When it arrives, carved and glistening, Meedu follows with a pot of thick, glossy jus studded with sun-dried Tunisian figs, ladling it generously over the slices as he explains the process.

With the first bite, the skin shatters, giving way to a layer of jellied fat that coats the mouth before yielding to perfectly cooked duck beneath. It’s tender, richly savoury, faintly sweet from the molasses, lifted by the citrus edge of black lime.

The figs add pockets of concentrated and fudgy sweetness that deepen the experience without tipping it into excess.

I feel like I’m repeating myself, but if you go to Impala you’ve got to order the duck. It’s so good. 

The dishes that fell short at Impala Soho

Not everything we eat at Impala is as good.

The langoustine kibbeh wrapped in perilla leaves is overwhelmed by its spicing, the sweetness of the shellfish lost beneath grassiness, and slight bitterness. Do I really want to eat a massive, raw, veiny leaf?

To my horror, I think my sister actually likes it though. There’s just no accounting for taste.

The second less successful dish is a heap of blanched greens with tomato and lemon. This dish leans too vegetal, too waterlogged, tasting more of soil and grass than anything else. It is universally disliked by us both. 

The food at Impala is often evocative – the aish baladi tastes ancient in its grain,  the duck is ceremonial, almost primal in the way fire and fat take centre stage. Then the perilla leaf and the soggy greens arrive and it’s less ancient hearth and more like being a cow out to pasture, munching on a sodden field. It’s not a feeling I appreciate at dinner. 

Maybe the lesson is to order more carbs and less greens from the Impala menu. 

A single dessert, perfectly judged

The sole dessert on the Impala menu is a salted date and pistachio tart. It doesn’t at first read as being anything special, and by now we’re over the pistachio trend. 

But stick with it. 

The crisp tart case holds a layer of salted date paste topped with thick, set custard and a carpet of pistachio.

The flavour is both nostalgic and contemporary. It’s part creme brulee interior, part tea-dunked rusk, part classic English pudding. I only wish it were bigger.

Well, no – really, you need one each, not one to share. 

Now, let’s talk about price

Our meal would have come to around £200 without drinks, so roughly £100 per person. That’s not cheap. But, in the current London restaurant landscape, it’s also not shocking. In fact, for cooking of this ambition and execution, it feels broadly in line with where things sit right now. I paid it happily for what we ate.

Value is more personal and what feels justified to one person may feel extravagant to another.

Take the duck. At £68 it initially seems high, particularly as the portion isn’t enormous. But once you taste it, once the skin shatters and the molasses and black lime come through, the value does too.

It’s also a dish that is meant to be shared. In fact, I wouldn’t want to eat it alone because it’s too rich, too decadent. It’s best shared between two people.

Impala is not a restaurant you can linger in

Our dinner lasts around an hour and a half, at a brisk but comfortable pace.

That said, right after dessert we’re gently encouraged to free up our counter seats for guests waiting behind us.

It’s handled politely, and given how full the room is, understandable. Still, it’s not a restaurant where you can linger. At this price point, that might grate. 

Four days in and the hottest table in London

By 6pm on this first Monday of service at Impala London, every seat is filled. Counter stools, tables, bar – they’re all taken. And yet the atmosphere remains composed. Staff move confidently through the room, refilling glasses, glugging more oil into dishes for bread, magicking food in front of us.

For a restaurant only four days old, Impala feels very confident.

Yes, not everything is flawless. A couple of dishes fail and being moved on at 90 minutes is less than ideal. But the general arc of the evening, from bread to brill to duck, leaves little doubt that seriously good cooking is happening at Impala Soho.

Just give the langoustine kibbeh a wide berth. 

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Impala Soho restaurant review
Address – 14 Dean St, London W1D 3RS
Nearest Tube – Tottenham Court Road