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DakaDaka, a rowdy paean to Georgian cuisine, has arrived on Heddon Street in the West End of London. Heddon Street has always been synonymous with rowdiness, regardless of the fact that the mature, semi-elegant likes of Sabor, Piccolino and Heddon Street Kitchen are quite the opposite. But anyone who ever found themselves staggering out of Strawberry Moons in the 1990s having lost a shoe and with a love bite or from the basement club at Momo will know that this little nook tucked away behind Regent Street is where a good time is meant to be had.
And now there’s DakaDaka, which certainly does not market itself as a nightclub, because, well, virtually nowhere does any more. What DakaDaka does do, though, is play Georgian dance music very loudly and with endless enthusiasm right through your badrijani (grilled aubergines), imeruli (cheese-filled flatbread) and kababi (lamb skewers). Helpfully, the brick walls have been painted pitch-black to give these dark, candle-lit, metal-clad premises a real sense that you’ve somehow stumbled into a 2am lock-in on a back street in Tbilisi, complete with pottery, folklore and blackboards on the walls, though this place also happens to serve grape salads and nakhvatsa (corn crisps). Some potential customers will no doubt read that and think: “Yippee! I love a restaurant where talking to my friends is no longer part of the arduous invisible labour of leaving the house.” Well, those people will adore DakaDaka, and should take up one of the tables in the heart of the melee. Otherwise, there’s also a sit-up counter behind which the open kitchen is in full swing, and where you can sit shoulder to shoulder with a total stranger. If you do, however, please dress in removable layers, because you will be directly next to the open fire used for “live fire cooking”, that hospitality phrase du jour that has caused me so much merriment in recent years because it proves that if you put enough male chefs in one room for long enough, they will literally believe they invented fire.
DakaDaka as a concept is pinned together by its floor staff, who are remarkable. God speed, you twinkly-humoured, matriarchal, no-nonsense women who conduct affairs with wild aplomb, explaining the lobio (kidney bean hummus) and khinkali (dumplings) in proud detail, while at the same time extolling the virtues of Georgian natural wine, 100 of which they offer here by the glass – the 2021 Kakheti is a feisty little number, while the country’s spin on the vesper martini would insulate you during a winter swim in the Black Sea.
The cooking, however, at least on the Saturday night we visited, had its highs and lows. The trouble with many open kitchens is that the chaos is fully visible to everyone, and this particular one was in full closing-song-at-Live-Aid mode, with about 87 people on stage, none of whom knew the words and with many of them just swaying and randomly jabbing the air. A plate of flat, very salty corn and millet crisps came with some great, punchy, walnut- and coriander-heavy dips. Small, plump grilled aubergines laced with walnut and pomegranate were soft, sweet and genuinely lovely, but the Ogleshield-stuffed cheese flatbread tasted almost identical to a stuffed-crust Domino’s pizza. Lamb kababi skewers were forgettable and a little overdone, while that grape salad – generous though it may have been with the grapes and leaves – didn’t really win me over to the idea of a long holiday in the Caucasus.
We ordered a whole sea bream to be cooked via that live fire, which turned out to be an enormous mistake. The first warning sign was that it took so very, very long to arrive, during which time there was a curious period when a great many cooks peered into the live fire, poked the fish and shrugged their shoulders. Eventually, a plate of mush with one eye and floppy skin attached was placed before me. I’m still puzzled how this occurred – one chef friend suggested later that the fish might have been frostbitten in storage, which is why it had turned to gloop.
After we begged for the bill, our lovely server convinced us to try the red-wine ice-cream, made with saperavi grapes and served with tiny, rather tough little ponchiki (doughnuts). “It’s very vinegary and salty, and I can’t really taste the wine,” I said very tactfully. “Yes, we finish it with balsamic and salt,” I was told. “Of course,” I said, nodding sagely.
DakaDaka is unforgettable: if you are Georgian, homesick, love loud music and want somewhere to let your hair down over dumplings, you’ll adore it; me, though, I’m on the fence.
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DakaDaka 10 Heddon Street, London W1, 020-4630 6435. Open Tues-Sat, lunch noon-2.30pm, dinner 5.30-10pm (10.30pm Fri & Sat). From about £75 a head à la carte, plus drinks & service
