Socotra Traditional Yemeni Cuisine, City Road, Cardiff: review

Socotra: a legendarily beautiful island off the coast of Yemen.

Also: a restaurant on City Road, Cardiff.

In Sanskrit it means ‘island of blessing’, which I suppose applies to both areas, if you tilt your head and squint a bit. Perhaps.

The island is famous for its ‘dragon blood’ tree, which grows nowhere else on earth, and whose distinctive coloured sap gives it its another name:

In Arabic, it is Dam al-akhawain – “the blood of the two brothers”; as, according to legend, the first tree grew on the spot where Darsa and Samha fought to the death. (Members of local Dragon Tree spotter clubs will want to avoid confusing it with distant relative, the ‘Drago Milenario’ in Icod de Los Vinos, Tenerife.)

The restaurant, though, is where Al Wali, Cardiff’s first Omani restaurant, stood. It is close to Hadramowt, which was the start of a personal obsession with mandi. (And if you’re playing catch-up, the first review of that is here.) Since then I’ve eaten it at Bab Al Yemen and Al-Madina Mandi (Grangetown) and The South Kitchen (Broadway); and- although their menu is more broadly Levantine than specialist Yemeni- at Castello here on City Road.

These tend to be places which go largely overlooked or ignored in the giddy world of local coverage, though, so you may have missed out on the joys of mandi. So let’s consider this my attempt to convert you to the cause, to the quiet pleasures of hawaij-spiced meat cooked over rice. (That spice mix, so important to so many Yemeni dishes, is a blend which often includes turmeric, cardamom, cumin, coriander and black pepper, though variations are not unusual.)

The menu’s fish section is busiest- tilapia, red bream, seabass, the intriguingly named ‘pratt’- and there is a smattering of grills- but it’s that combination of rice and meat which is the main draw tonight.

On one of those Cardiff evenings when the damp seeps into your marrow, chicken, slow-cooked and shredded before being smashed into an aqdah stew of onions and red and green peppers, seems just the thing. Photogenic this is not. Comfort food for the famously balmy Cardiff microclimate, it certainly is: and plenty of it, too.

Bread- thin, lightly bubbled, crisp in parts- is serviceable. Prices are keen here- take spiced strips of lamb’s liver, quickly stir-fried with peppers and onions- (and let’s be thankful for places like this which are serving offal, like Amo’s or Castello)- and a hearty portion for just six pounds.

Muzbi (mazbi) is mandi-like, though the chicken is grilled rather than baked, the addition of Hadramowt-like charred onions and sultanas makes for a happy dive into the strikingly shaded mass of rice.

I love the little rituals of serving mandi: the bowls of limpid, aromatic stock brought as an opener, the pots of raw chilli paste and tangy strained and seasoned yoghurt ready to accompany the main event. The mandi itself is a life-affirming thing, that mound of rice and meat, the long grains cosseted by the juices falling from the meat, perfuming them, enriching them; the meat

Whichever cut of lamb ends up on your plate is probably more down to luck and the timing of your order (and, inevitably, it is served on the bone) so be prepared to dig in until your fingers sing with animal fats. Forget any dainty knife and fork palaver, because ideally, this is food to be shared, for hands darting in for just one more piece, for that precious moment when we break bread and connect with each other.

Juices arrive almost at the end of our meal. A gripe, on another night, perhaps, but neither of us are in the mood to chase them up, somehow: there’s something about this food that lulls you into a good mood. A sense of plenty, of generosity, which means you overlook the niggles.

City Road is still where you come to think ‘Hospitality crisis…what hospitality crisis?’ Apart from feeding you well, Socotra’s pricing is generous to a fault. Two could eat well here, with leftovers to take home, and still get change from £30.

And we all need to have a place like that up our sleeve, no?

Socotra Traditional Yemeni Cuisine

82 City Road, Cardiff CF24 3DD