Review: Donia, Soho

Donia, up on the top floor of Kingly Court, are serving up Philippine food through the filter of London modern high-end small-plate cooking. I find Philippine cuisine hard to pin down. It doesn’t have any of the powerful sweet-salt-hot-sour melange of other SE Asian cuisines, and doesn’t go in heavily on the spices like South Asian cuisines. They’ve got a great tradition of desserts, probably the best in east Asia. And of course, plenty of seafood. So… probably not my personal favourite Asian cuisine, but luckily the kitchen at Donia would put out great plates of food no matter how much they leaned into their home cuisine!

So, we have a pair of beautiful little croquettes filled with mushrooms soaked in the distinct flavour of Philippine adobo. Then there’s a heritage tomato salad, pepped up with softly mashed salted eggs and chilli. Pandesal is a lovely soft brioche-like bread typical of the Philippines, paired with whipped wild garlic butter in honour of spring. Slices of sea bream are very lightly cured in kalamansi lime (a preparation called “kinilaw”) and served with herb oil, microherbs and nasturtium leaves; it’s a very pretty plate and a beauty to eat, perfectly balanced and seasoned. Chicken heart skewers are always lovely, I think perhaps here they have been doused in an adobo sauce.

Our biggest dish is lechon – roast suckling pig – and it comes as six sturdy slices of juicy but rather dense pork, a layer of nicely crisp crackling on top. The very best bit is the generous lake of liver-peppercorn sauce the pork is served with. This is gorgeous: sweet, spiced, peppery and packed with iron-y umami flavour. We finish with a choux bun filled with ube ice cream. The bun is superb pastry, crisp and soft at the same time. Ube is one Philippine ingredient that I find overrated: a purple yam used often in desserts, probably because of the arrestingly lurid violet colour it gives to custards, creams and ice cream. Just no real flavour… maybe a hint of bean curd?

We had a couple of nice cocktails with food. Dinner would be around £45-50 each before drinks, less if you don’t need a main course each (we shared). Everything was extremely delicious and I’d call this pretty good value. Definite recommendation – maybe just don’t expect Philippine food to taste this good if you ever go there on holiday!