Review: Lao Cafe, Covent Garden

My only brush with Laos up to now was three nights in Luang Prabang as part of a trip down the Mekong a few years ago. I remember the food as very fiery, strong on herbs, not using coconut milk and fairly distinct from neighbouring countries. I also remember wandering around the market and finding more bizarre and alarming things on sale than any other market I’ve been to. I honestly think I saw a bucket full of live tribbles. So how well does Lao Cafe bring the cuisine of Laos to central London?

Pretty well. The vibe of this small eatery is street food, with stripped back reclaimed furniture and bare industrial details. It’s all about the food and the flavours.

We pick a grilled pork neck laab, which is meant to be a salad but there’s honestly not much of anything else with the meat apart from some onion and the gravy. Still, it’s a fierce and delicious plate of pork, sharp and herbal with sweet notes and very nicely grilled.

Our other salad is a papaya salad, similar to Thai som tam but with a heavily fishy anchovy dressing. This did make the salad an unappealing dirty dishwater colour, but flavour-wise it hit all the right notes… maybe just a bit TOO fiercely hot for me. Their method of letting you choose your heat level is quirky: they ask how many chillies you want in the salad. Erm. Kinda depends how hot the chillies are? How big the salad is? I asked for 3 chillies and can report that I wish I’d gone for 1 or 2.

Anyway, a northern Laos herb sausage off the grill is absolutely bursting with fragrant spices. And the mushroom curry is a fine contrast to all the ferocity. It still has a very full-flavoured broth with some warmth and a lot of intriguing flavours in it, with a good mixture of sturdy fungi soaking in it, and for a couple of quid extra you can try ant eggs sprinkled on top. They aren’t eggs. They look like giant baby white ants. More for novelty and protein than flavour.

Lao Cafe brings a different cuisine to the middle of London, and if you like spice and haven’t tried it then you should definitely go. You can probably spend £28 each before drinks, which is good value. The dishes are a little less accomplished than some of the very best South-East Asian places around, but only a little.