Bukowski Grill was an alluring, infuriating presence in Brixton Village when I lived a few streets away.
In two years of living south-west I came to know the outside of the BBQ joint far better than the inside. Got to know the smell of their charcoal-grilled meat, curling through the Village corridors, better than the feel of biting into it. Queues snaked past other restaurants and around corners, reaching so far away from Bukowski it gave you the false hope on the approach to their shopfront that these people couldn’t be after the same burgers and shortrib as you.
But they always were. And thankfully – belatedly, because how long do you have to stand outside a restaurant, scuffing wistfully at the floor with your foot and making yearning faces before they expand to another, larger site? – now there’s Soho.
Brixton’s still there with its queues, which I surrender to the southwesterners. There’s still a branch in Boxpark Shoreditch but it’s a 16-seater bonsai version. Soho is the new flagship restaurant, it seats 70 covers, the press releases say ‘something a bit different’ and – the first something a bit different, unique among the branches – you can book. I make a dinner reservation for one of my dad’s fleeting visits back to London, trying to think of a food genre he wouldn’t easily find at home.
My poor dad. He lives a wholesome lifestyle in a Mediterranean country, going for long hikes and – in my mind, at least – nibbling with healthful contentment on a handful of olives or a fresh tomato when hunger strikes. Your average dinner at Bukowski is more meat on one plate than he’d usually get through in a month. And I’m not planning to do this averagely. I’ve attempted Bukowski Brixton too many times to do this with moderation. What we’re about to eat at Bukowski represents all the Bukowskis I didn’t get to eat while I was living south-west.
But as Charles Bukowski, (probable) namesake of this place, said, ‘Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.’
So wise, Charles. I could not bear for my dad to lead a horrible life and so I am taking him to eat a crazy amount of meat, as supplied by chef/owner Robin Freeman and his Josper charcoal-ovens.
To my dad’s mild relief, the ‘something a bit different’ promised by the hype reaches as far as the menu. It’s awash with meat, tobacco onions and beef dripping chips, but they aren’t catering solely for competitive eaters and seekers of Dude Food. For proof of which: Pickled Watermelon Salad.
Pickled watermelon is 2016’s anchovy butter: the foodstuff so specific you never noticed the want of it in your life, but that all of a sudden you can find in beautiful abundance – availability crescendoing at the same rate your need for it does. Pickled watermelon with jalapeno and feta, crumbled peanuts and ripped up coriander, the way they do it at Bukowski, is a thing so odd and good there isn’t even a butter to compare it to.
This salad might perversely be my favourite part of our dinner, a non-meat, un-grilled dish at a restaurant specialising in meat grills. But the Bukowski meat is still a thing to justify those Brixton queues, the best being the bar snack of puck nuggets – pork and duck nuggets, kimchi remoulade – and the 72 hour beef rib main course.
Also the chicken and waffle. I’ve spent more time than I’m proud of trying to evangelise the chicken-and-waffle combination to naysayers, and the thing is, it’s dense, sweet, fried, sticky and a lot of beige; it’s not for everybody. For the maybe-persuadable this is the buttermilk waffle and chicken thigh to turn you. It’s still, yes, about the same density as a collapsing star, but you’ve got the green chili in the maple syrup slicing through the heaviness of everything, the chicken fried into a tender inside and crisp shell.
Also on hand to cut through the haze of smoky meat and tobacco onions at Bukowski is a decent drinks list. You’d expect the beerlist at a BBQ joint to be solid, and it is – that it’s entirely British and a bit esoteric is a surprise bonus, throwing in lesser-spotted Clarkshaws and Hopdaemon ales along with a few Meantime, Brixton and Pressure Drop standards. Between that and the cocktails, it’s worth a pre-theatre drop-in for puck nuggets and a barrel-aged negroni or a craft beer, even if there’s not enough time to embed with beef ribs.
We’re foggy with bourbon, sleepy from the lateness and sticky with chili syrup by the time we leave. Bukowski the author would approve.
Bukowski Grill Soho, 10 D’Arblay Street, London W1F 8DS. Tel: 0203 8574756. Website.
