Review: Hummy Yummy, Lebanese restaurant

It’s not just hipster Chinese Zing Zing that’s gone and tarted up a high street takeaway in central Kentish. The site of short-lived kebab house Lebanese Garden has also just been transformed, into…a Lebanese restaurant.

But despite a garish new colour scheme, questionable font choice and unfathomably cutesie name, Hummy Yummy isn’t simply another fly-by-night makeover. We gave it a whirl at lunchtime and found a menu bristling with fresh juices and meze platters, plus new owners keen to offer relaxed BYO dining late into the evenings.

As so often with meze, there are lots of interesting dishes on display, but strange rules governing how many and in which combination they are offered. To avoid either overspending or overeating, you somehow always end up with a set ‘mixed’ plate, and miss out on some of the best-looking ones.

The mixed meze on offer here is £9, so not exactly a budget lunch option when eaten in with a drink (there are a range of more affordable take-out salad boxes though, and a new daily special for a fiver). Of the many flavours, nothing particularly stood out, yet the sum of the parts made for a very decent meal.

As a bit of a longtime connoisseur of the area’s falafels, I somehow managed to miss selecting this crispy centrepiece ingredient when panicking over the selection process. They looked good stacked up behind the counter and would have offset the slightly too smooth, tahini-heavy hummus, and given the lemony tabbouleh more body.

A second plate of grilled chicken pieces with a similar selection of small dishes (also £9) worked better as an ensemble, the meat juicy and nicely seasoned. And the little bowl of crunchy pickles was a nice touch too.

Unlike Phoenicia across the way, none of the meze would really work as a standalone dish. And the platter doesn’t reach the dizzying heights of the much missed Café Euro Med, (now the squatted Itta Pizza).

And yet this place has promise. The work they’ve done to the building is considerable. As well as the shocking lime green service area where we sat, there’s a large raised dining area at the back, and beyond that a large, comfortable yard for shisha smoking sessions.

It’s easy to forget the oasis that runs along the back gardens here, from gig-cum-lecture spot Flaxon Ptootch to naturist basking terraces at Rios. And now this new secret garden. Shiver-some at the moment, though.

It felt like lunch wasn’t the best time to visit, and at night, when the area could certainly do with a casual cafe style spot, the hubbly bubbly vibe could, in fact, be quite magical.