Opening in partnership with restaurant group Super 8, which operates London restaurants Mountain, Smoking Goat, Brat and Kiln, Impala will be a charcoal grill restaurant with influences from North Africa to North London.
Named after the cherry red 1964 Chevrolet Impala Saad drove around during his summers in Egypt, the Soho-based restaurant will be located on Dean Street and have a menu built around an open fire grill that takes centre stage in the dining room.
Impala’s menu writing journey began a few years ago with a recipe eaten at a family friend’s house in the north of Egypt where the mango harvest was celebrated by roasting ducks in ghee and warming dry spices with the fruit. Translated to London, ducks from Devon are dry-aged and stuffed with black lime and chillies from Aswan, roasted over wood embers with molasses and served in a sauce pressed from the carcass in a nod to Saad’s decade cooking classic French cuisine.
Other dishes on the grill-led menu will include a range of skewers and beef ribs that will be cooked very close to the hot coals designed to create a gentle smokey char; sardines cooked in grape leaves; and wild greens braised in olive oil.
Among ingredients that will feature are honey preserved young green figs, salt-packed greengages and gooseberries, peppers and aubergines that have been fermented with walnuts and chilli and preserved in Cretan olive oil, and salted citrus and green walnuts to be served alongside grilled meats, fish, and grains.
Cream sourced from Cumbria will be churned into soft, fresh cheese made in house, while garum will be made on the premises from sardines.
Impala will also have a wood oven in which toasted rice and meat dishes will be cooked, a method inspired by a trip to his aunt where toasted rice with ghee was paired with roasted river fish cooked in glowing embers.
“Growing up, I saw river fish baked in bran around the community ovens in Ismailia, opened clams over small fires along the beaches of the Red Sea and watched spit roast sheep turning in smoke filled Cypriot kebab houses in Haringey,” says Saad.
“All of these memories are carried through into our cooking today.”
Five years in the making, the restaurant is being designed by Super 8 co-founder Ben Chapman alongside long-time collaborator designer and maker Dan Preston. The 1960s dining room will feature concrete pillars juxtaposed with polished veneers selected for their grain pattern, and sheer fabrics.
At the front will be a bar flanked by a bespoke speaker system made from repurposed cinema horns that will lead to the dining room at the rear of the building.
The room will be led by Fanny Derozier who spent seven years at Kiln and will have an atmosphere ‘which recalls the energy of the Friday markets in Cairo, colliding with a Soho bar’ according to the team.