Covent Garden Rice Bar Suda

This fictitious but nevertheless accurate definition is very much embraced by Suda, a Siamese rice bar that is geared towards a celebration of classic – and not so classic – rice-based dishes for your delectation. What’s more, they claim to have the UK’s first ‘som tam’ (a traditional spicy papaya salad) bar, ostensibly designed to bring Thai street food to your London lap. The Covent Garden venue makes its homage to rice pretty evident from the moment you walk through the door thanks to rice-themed decorative touches that populate the ground floor bar area.

Venture upstairs and you will find a 100+ capacity restaurant, complete with a dark and broody colour scheme and an open-to-see kitchen. When I visited I was welcomed with some of the Suda rice-based cocktails and was immediately blown away. The ‘Wild Rice’ (roasted rice, Sake and white flower liqueur) and the ‘Rice Sour’ (rice, Sake and lemon juice) were real tongue spinners and I cannot recommend them enough. As such, diverting my attention away from these glorious rice-tastic beauties was no easy feat, but the ensuing food tasters certainly tried their best.

In particular, the coconut, prawn and scallop soup and the fish and prawn lollipops (£5.50) were packed with flavour and celebrated the produce with great gusto. Larger dishes I tried included the sweet and delightful prawn tempura in tamarind sauce (£7.95) and an array of eye-wateringly spicy rice and seafood dishes adapted from the menu, all accomplished and packed with flavour.

To finish my meal, I tried the taro balls in coconut cream (£4.50) and an off-menu ginger and rice dish, both of which were relatively tasty, but lacking the depth of flavour found the savoury dishes. Still, the prices of the desserts are reasonable and you aren’t likely to have room left anyway given the range of savoury dishes that you should have already tried.

As always with Thai food, the level of spice – as well as underlying subtleties in flavouring – in the dishes at Suda will likely be subject to intense scrutiny, especially by those who are veterans of home-grown Thai cuisine.

I personally have never been to Thailand, but there is definitively an emphasis on richly flavoured and highly-spiced food present at Suda, and I believe the owners when they say they have kept the cuisine more authentic than many other London restaurants, particularly with respect to the level of heat.

However, that is not to say that it won’t fall short of the food back East, particularly with respect to the som tam bar which, although designed to emulate Thai street food, is never going to fully succeed within the swanky touristic confines of Covent Garden. To be honest, I don’t care, and I’ll leave such arguments up to those more qualified. What Suda does have is food packed with flavour, and rice should be very grateful for how it is treated there.

…Right, time for another cocktail.

SUDA
23 Slingsby Place
St Martin’s Courtyard
Covent Garden
WC2E 9AB

Tel: 020 7240 8010