Salmon Uri with spicy ginger beer

It’s always good to find a restaurant that takes non-alcoholic drinks as seriously as it does boozy ones so it was an easy decision to order a spicy ginger beer cocktail at The Palomar the other day.

It’s a new modern Israeli restaurant in Rupert Street just off Piccadilly Circus which serves really original brightly flavoured Mediterranean food with a few Asian touches. The ‘Uri’ was a bit like a sashimi but with a cured onion and ginger vinaigrette - too much ginger you might have thought but there was also citrus peel (orange, lemon and lime) in the drink and salmon is so good with both citrus and ginger that it just worked brilliantly.

The drink also matched well with the other dishes we ordered including an excellent fattoush and kubania, their middle-eastern style take on a steak tartare.

Desserts, including basboussa - a semolina cake with whipped yogurt, orange syrup and ground walnut brittle and malabi (a rose-scented milk pudding with raspberry sauce, coconut meringue pistachio crunch, fresh raspberries & kataifi were delicious too.

The restaurant is tiny but they take walk-ins at the bar.

Mezze and apple, mint and ginger lemonade

It must be the unseasonally hot weather but I've been drinking a lot of soft drinks lately. There seems to be much more choice on the market, especially more sophisticated drinks that are full of flavour but not too sweet. And which go well with food.

A good example is this combination of apple mint and ginger lemonade and mezze at the new branch of Yalla Yalla just off Oxford Street. Mint and apple is a really refreshing combination and went well with our diverse selection of mezze which included some very good, light felafel, tabbouleh (parsley salad), batata harra (a Lebanese take on patatas bravas) and - I think I remember rightly - Samboussek Lahmé, a delicious pizza-like dish of flatbread stuffed with spiced lamb.

I must confess to a feeling of slight regret to seeing Yalla Yalla roll out as a successful brand. The new branch, which is at the top of Winsley Street, just opposite the oddly named Pantheon branch of Marks and Spencer, isn't as cute and café-like as the original in Green's Court in Soho but you stand a much better chance of getting a seat and the food is still great.

They also have an interesting list of Lebanese wines should you feel like drinking something stronger.