Bubala, Spitalfields
A slab of halloumi drenched in black seed honey is the one dish Time Out calls non-negotiable here, and nothing on the menu has meat in it.5
Why go
Marc Summers found Helen Graham on Facebook, ran pop-ups with her from October 2018, and had the keys to 65 Commercial Street by July 2019.4 He had been general manager at Berber & Q; she had cooked at The Palomar, The Barbary and The Good Egg.8
The menu carries no meat because both of them were finished with it. We'd had enough with dealing with meat on a daily basis
, Summers says, and Graham was tired of the waste a meat kitchen throws out.4
Bubala is Yiddish for darling, the word a grandparent uses, and the street is family ground. My grandfather was born here, as was Helen's grandmother
, Summers says.4 Graham's mother lived on Brick Lane.8
Order this / avoid
- Order: the laffa, which comes in from Ararat bakery in Dalston, and all four dips to tear it into. The hummus carries a pool of burnt butter in the middle and the labneh comes with confit garlic.1
- Order: the oyster mushroom skewers, brushed with tamari. The MICHELIN inspector calls them the signature.25
- Order: the confit potato latkes, crisp top and bottom and flaking apart in the middle. Lucas Oakeley wanted more Aleppo chilli in the toum under them.3
- Order: the tahini, date and tangerine ice cream last. The tahini does the job salted caramel usually does and keeps the sweetness in check.3
- Avoid: filling up on the large plates. Foodism found the grilled romanesco
fine, but not spectacular
, and The Infatuation put the grilled cabbage and the coconut sorbet a grade below the rest.31 - Avoid: turning up without a table. Harden's reporters say the trouble with the place is that it is always crowded.7
What locals & experts say
- Jake Missing, The Infatuation, rating 8.5:
we've almost bitten fingers off shovelling charred laffa flatbread heaped with burnt butter hummus into our mouths.
1 - The MICHELIN inspector, on the menu:
Dips and flatbreads, falafel, potato latkes and the signature oyster mushroom skewers can be found on a menu elevated by the chefs' delicate spicing.
2 - Lucas Oakeley, Foodism, the month it opened: the vegetarian menu
bears all the hallmarks of Ottolenghi's Nopi, among its other influences. It's also, thankfully, worthy of proximity to those titans.
3 - Harden's survey:
Believe the hype: even the meat-eaters don't complain.
7 - Daniella Saunders, Country & Town House, 2021, writing after Jay Rayner in the Observer and Jimi Famurewa in ES Magazine had both been:
A vegetarian and vegan's delight
.6
Good to know
- Where: 65 Commercial Street, Spitalfields, south of the market.2
- Booking: book well ahead. Reporters say a table is hard to get.7
- At dinner the a la carte gives way to a set menu the house calls
Bubala Knows Best
.2 - Vegan: a separate vegan tasting menu swaps in braised hispi with whipped tofu, ponzu and a chive and ginger salsa, and smashed batata harra.6
- Money: Time Out's September 2025 figures put small plates at 3 to 13 pounds and larger ones at 16 to 17, with the weekday lunch sharing menu at 32 a head and 44 in the evening.5
- Drink: the list leads on orange wine, which is a deliberate match for this kind of cooking.6
- Other doors: Soho, Shoreditch and, from April 2025, King's Cross. This one came first.78
Verdict
must-visit — Marc Summers found Helen Graham on Facebook, they ran pop-ups for a year, and in September 2019 they opened a vegetarian Middle Eastern room on the street where his grandfather was born. Everyone who writes about it agrees on the small plates: the laffa from Ararat bakery in Dalston, the burnt-butter hummus, the halloumi in black seed honey that Time Out calls non-negotiable, the tamari oyster mushroom skewers the MICHELIN inspector calls the signature. Two of them agree on the weak half as well, which is the large plates, so order lots of little things and stop. Jake Missing scored it 8.5 for The Infatuation; Lucas Oakeley put it next to Ottolenghi's Nopi the month it opened; Harden's reporters say even the meat-eaters do not complain. The room is small, loud and hard to book, and reporters themselves connect that to the prices staying where they are. A vegetable kitchen this precise, at this money, is worth planning a night around.