Address: 10 Market Row, SW9 8LB

Website: https://www.rubensreubens.com/

We have tried to get into this place before, but they had a strict no entry before 6.00 and we were 10 minutes early. It was Friday and we were trying to jump the inevitable queues. This time we got a seat on a Saturday but still early – book as it fills up very quickly and most seemed to have their own table. But their website tells you nothing about how to do this and we are very glad we photographed the menu.

This restaurant promotes its own smoked meat and fish with a mix of Jewish and Polish flavours. The menu is blessedly short with barbecue (lamb, sausage, wings) as well as vegie and vegan offerings (King Pao-strami cauliflower, burnt sesame broccoli, chilli cheese hispi), so a range of offers are mostly of the meat sandwich variety (corned beef, pastrami etc) although there is a veggie option. We chose the meat sandwiches.

First the obvious – a Reuben with sauerkraut, gherkins, Emmenthal, Russian dressing and mustard. As you can see this was a stack of corned beef in this one. Nicely toasted so you don’t have to balance the mouthfuls to stop it disintegrating – it was a little spicy, sour and crunchy too.

Next was a Kimchi – as it sounds it was pastrami with kimchi-kraut, gherkins, cheddar, gochujang mayo and mustard. Again a very good choice for anyone interested in a good bite to eat with a warm feeling that you have treated your gut to one of your three K’s a day (kimchi, kefir and kombucha).

Chips come with a dose of everything – salt, pepper and other stuff. We now forget if it was rosemary or mustard seed – you don’t really need to know anything more than they were delicious.

We had space for malted ice cream, gingerbread and salted caramel. we could taste the ginger but we think they need to put more Horlicks into the ice cream.

We washed everything down with beer although cocktails were available.

The whole meal came to £27.56 – a bargain! Now we have noticed it seems closed – sorry Reubens Reubens we should have been faster promoting your restaurant.