Sarona Eatery is a new Middle Eastern restaurant which opened its doors in May 2018 in Clerkenwell. Sarona Eatery is inspired by the street food of Tel-Aviv to the streets of East London, they serve Tel Aviv classics but have also added an East London Twist.
Sarona Eatery is located on Clerkenwell Road with the nearest tube station being Farringdon (a 5 minute walk away). The restaurant is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner Monday-Friday7:30AM-23:00PM and also opens on a Saturday for Shabbat Brunch from 11:00AM-22:00PM.
The founders wanted to create a restaurant that enabled people to come together and eat good Israeli food and we think the restaurant has really hit the nail on the head.
Everything on the menu is homemade in the Sarona Kitchen which we absolutely loved as you know the food you are being served is fresh and has been made with love. The menu was designed with sharing in mind which is exactly what we did when we visited one Saturday afternoon.
Upon arriving at the restaurant we were greeted by the waitress who took us to the table that had been reserved for us, the table was inside and due to it being a lovely sunny day we asked if we were able to sit outside which she said wasn’t a problem at all. There were several tables outside that we can imagine are packed during the week. The city is always much quieter at the weekends so we were lucky to have the outside seating area to ourselves.
We asked the waitress and manager for their suggestions to ensure we were able to try a selection of dishes. We are not fussy eaters (we are up for trying anything) so we suggested they surprise us with the dishes. We do this quite frequently when we are visiting restaurants and we haven’t had a bad recommendation as of yet.
To start we both ordered a glass of wine Rachel went for the house rose and Annie went for the house Sauvignon Blanc. Both were delicious and the perfect drinks to enjoy with our feast!
The menu consisted of three sections the first one being the ‘dipping and ripping’ section! We were served Handmade Sarona Humus which consisted of Tahini sauce, chickpeas, schug and olive oil served with pita bread. If you love hummus then we would definitely recommend this dish it was so tasty, if you are wondering what schug is like we were it is an Israeli hot sauce it wasn’t that spicy though so don’t let this put you off.
We also tried the Chopped Grilled Aubergine with fresh mint and pomegranate rubies, this reminded us of baba ganoush and we especially liked the pomegranate and mint flavours as they really gave the dish a little bit of extra flavour. This is the perfect dish to share with friends and it is also served with pita bread on the side.
There were lots of dishes on the small plates section of the menu that took our fancy especially the Crispy Cauliflower with tahini sauce, amba sauce and roasted almonds which we were served and absolutely love. We are mad for tahini so knew we were going to love this dish, the amba sauce is a popular Middle Eastern picked mango condiment which was also really tasty. This was definitely one of our favourite dishes we tried at Sarona so we would 100% recommend you ordering it.
The Spiced lamb kofta with cucumber, spring onion, mint and sour cream was also another favourite of ours and a dish we would definitely order again. This dish was served with 2 lamb koftas which were generous in size and they were really generous with the salad. This would be the perfect dish if you wanted to enjoy your own starter without sharing.
When we say we had a feast we really did mean it, the final section of the menu is called ‘big plates’ and this is the main dishes although as we were sharing everything we had all the dishes arrive as and when they are cooked which we really enjoyed.
The All Day Shakshuka is a hawayej roast lamb shoulder that is cooked for 14 hours before being added to slow cooked cherry tomatoes and free-range eggs served with grilled sourdough bread. This was quite a rich dish with lots of delicious flavours, but the lamb was so tender and cooked to perfection. We especially loved the bread that was served on the side it was a brioche based bread that was sweet and complimented the shakahuka perfectly.
The Chermoula marinated Bavette Steak is a 45 day old Hereford Bavette served on green bean, fennel and pomegranate salad, if we are hones this was probably our least favourite dish it was still tasty and the flavours were delicious but we just found it to be a little chewy.
The Spiced Tune Steak is a chargrilled schug spiced yellow fin tuna with caramelised lime and oh my this was just incredible. We cannot recommend the tuna steak enough, we had it cooked rare which we are glad about as it was so flavoursome and we loved the schug spice sauce.
As you can imagine we were stuffed after this, so full that we couldn’t even order a dessert to try. The dessert did sound delicious though there was a choice of apple, plum and organs blossom strudel, home baked rogelach and a gluten free dark chocolate brownie.
The toilets were also immaculate and decor was beautiful. We especially loved the pink velvet round sofa in the hallway of the toilets- we would quite like one of them for ourselves!
We absolutely loved our afternoon at Sarona Eatery, the staff we fab and were so attentive making sure we had everything we needed and were enjoying our time. We cannot recommend this restaurant enough and we will definitely we returning with a larger group so we can share the love!
