Saf Restaurant - London - London

Gourmet Restaurant and Bar

Saf Restaurant & Bar London saf


I'm tempted to say nothing because Saf left me pretty much speechless. Be assured it will probably be one of the best restaurant experiences you've ever been privileged enough to enjoy. On one hand one doesn't want to say too much about Saf restaurant so you enjoy as I did the slow relaxed unveiling of a meal with all the excitement that gradually and modestly builds into disbelief.

The whole experience left me giggling like a small child in disbelief that they'd finally just woken up in Disneyland after many years of coveting living the dream of magic woven into a strange alice in wonderland reality.

Having grown up in a west London Delicatessen into a "I could do better than that" vegan you learn to live with culinary dissapointment. Saf restaurant lulls you into a false sense of security with seemingly mundane sounding dishes such as ravioli and lasagne, dishes I've learnt not to even bother asking about.

They further challenged my arrogant, pessimistic faith by having a cheese board, and illegally listing ingredients such as "parmesan" and nonchalently leaving me to struggle with the "never knowingly consume" vegan get out clause on a bottle of organic vegan stout that was not only delicious but clearly marked as approved by the vegan society.

Step by step Saf restaurant slowly pulled my sneering assumptions from underneath me to eventually reveal a glass floor window to all my culinary fantasies, past, present and those yet to come.

It was like they had read my mind, squeezed out every ounce of desire, used that to draw a new place to live and then used Mickey Mouse's magic wand to imaginatively colour it in. All that makes it sound veggie hippy and psychedelic but it's not. It's the opposite. It oozes class and Manhatten understated chic. It's almost as though they've sat down and taken every vegetarian and vegan restaurant cliche and mischievously created the complete opposite, just for fun.

Saf restaurant is everything that you don't expect it to be. No matter who you are and what you are looking for in fine dining Saf restaurant will leave you surprised at the very least, and at most more probably like me feeling it an honour to have been allowed to eat and drink there.

Saf restaurant will will trick meat eaters into thinking it's just another merchant bankers, city slickers flash in the pan, hedge funded tax dodge, get in there quick and prove you are the coolest sleuth with a finger on the London pulse. It will trick whinging vegetarians into their moaning minnie comfort zone eagerly waiting for the ubiquitous culinary veggie faux pas so they can humiliate the poor waitress with her ignorance of the finer details of culinary veganism. They'll all be swallowed up, enveloped, re-educated and amazed with saf-ilicious expertise, style and perfected panache.

This is not just food, this is saf cuisine, this is not just service this is saf attention, this is not just a restaurant in London it is a magic doorway into the future of eating. Saf means 'pure' in Turkish and many other middle eastern languages for me it was pure magic, pure fantasy, pure indulgence pure epicurian ecstasy a pure personification of all my wildest dreams and more.

Saf Restaurant already has sister venues in Germany and Turkey and I fail to comprehend how it could fail to slowly and steadily turn into a cult restaurant chain like Cranks became in the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's and mid 1990's (though much much more indulgent and hedonistic)

Reviews Saf Restaurant City AM
"presented like this, with all the chic design, superlative cocktails and grinning service of its Manhattan original, this is the kind of food we could get used to."
Saf Restaurant The Times
The cool culinary trend from the US that is taking off over hereThe beetroot ravioli is looking good; tasting good, too, considering that it's not made with pasta. The beetroot acts as the parcel, cut into two paper-thin discs. The stuffing is a cashew herb “ricotta”, and it's served with an asparagus salad and balsamic figs, finished off with a slick of pumpkin seed oil. Sounds good, doesn't it? And it is. So is the rest of the meal at Saf, London's first gourmet raw food restaurant
Saf Restaurant - Time Out
It's almost a shame to eat dishes this pretty; and it's even more remarkable when you realise these compositions, with their vivid colours, variety of textures and unusual flavours, are created almost entirely from uncooked fruit and veg A remarkable restaurant - and a must-visit if you're a vegetarian bored of eating mushroom risotto or pasta dishes every time you eat out.
Saf Restaurant - Are You Ready To Order
- It is a singular restaurant offering an eating experience to be found nowhere else in the city. There are plenty of vegetarians out there who are bored to sobs with the roast aubergine/pasta/salad axis of evil which is trundled out to cater for them with insulting ubiquity elsewhere. They ache, ache, ache to eat stuff like this. Everything here is the best it can be. Saf goes all out to provesthat veganism does not have to be austere and boring, but can be zesty and interesting if enough obsessive care is taken.
by Tony Bishop-Weston - Food for Life

Have a read of the menu.

For more information try this site.

Address

152-154 Curtain Road, London, London, EC2A 3AT

Tel

+44 (0)20 76130 007

Directions

Stations – Liverpool Street, Old Street , Shoreditch – London – then walk (after getting directions on Google) or get a taxi and ask for “saf restaurant the best vegetarian restaurant in London”

map

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( Last updated by croydonwm on 2008-06-04 16:34:38 )

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