The Castle, Riverside, Cardiff: Yemeni restaurant review

By now, you should know your mandi from your madhgout, your maraq from your mulawah, even your foul from your fahsa. Don’t worry if you’re not yet fully up to speed, though, because The Castle is here to help.

Newly opened at the top of Neville Street, opposite St Davids hospital- as Cardiff landmarks go, few carry more weight- The Castle is the latest in a succession few seem to have remarked on. The recent proliferation of Yemeni restaurants has been, to my mind anyway, one of the more interesting Cardiff food trends in recent years. We now have more Yemeni restaurants than ‘mainstream’ independent prospects like Spanish or (and I’m sure someone will tell me if I’m wrong) Thai.

Since the first review of Hadramowt on City Road in 2022, options have bloomed. Expansion, reinvention. The South Kitchen has gone from somewhere you sat cross legged on a Broadway carpet, to a prime Albany Road spot. Hadramowt? A second branch, and Qamariyah has cannily raised the bar by adding a bit of Western restaurant polish to the experience. Grangetown’s Bab Al Yemen. Yemeni Sketch. Kingdom of Sheba on Bute St. Sanaa. You can even add the lovely Ayeeyo’s, at a pinch.

And this week, I have eaten at The Castle three times. So why has it made such an impression?

You can see the local community already embracing it. Sometimes it’s tables of young men. Friday, around five and after prayers, it is the ‘uncles’ who eat slowly and with quiet intent. A serious business, this. An ex-pupil recognises me, I ask after his family and recommend the lamb mandi as it’s his first time here. I reflect that large portions of my life seem to be me telling people ‘Have the mandi’.

I like the energy of the young team here, their obvious pride in what they do, the pitch-in attitude. As one takes a call asking about two whole shoulders of lamb, another of the hairnetted chefs slips out of his kitchen clogs to serve customers seated within the raised majlis area. A third, headphones on, is busy with mulawah dough, kneading and spinning and slapping the buttered mass into a state of surrender normally only seen inside the Principality Stadium down the road.

They’re open all day, every day, with a busy breakfast and light lunch menu- I love the sound of a fried egg sandwich as much as the next person, but liver intrigues- but my three visits to date have all been very much in the ‘Work has finished and I’m knackered, so what do I fancy more than anything right now?’ mindset. And the answer to that, so often, is ‘lamb mandi’, because it is one of those things which guarantees me a few moments of quiet, unfiltered peace. Begone, dull care and all that: a huge mound of steamed lamb and spiced, perfumed rice is here, and you’re going to forget everything else. Just for a bit.

Meat and rice is a recurring theme, a broad category in which you’ll find other staples: kabsa, haneeth, zurbian and madghout. Your table is covered with a plastic sheet because there will be collateral damage: this is not a time where you’d be advised to sit, all prissy and poised, knife ready to excise any trace of fat. Go and disapprove somewhere else, because mandi celebrates it, the hawaij spice blend and smoke combining to stain the fat a rich turmeric yellow.

Fahsa, with its pungent fenugreek, bubbles and seethes in its cast iron skillet as it arrives at the next table. Meat aqdah, a crescent of shredded lamb and vegetables braised into wanton juiciness, is so deeply flavoured and juicy-tender I’d probably describe it as ‘unctuous’ if it wasn’t one of those words. It probably won’t win any ‘Looker of the Year’ awards, and it’s all the better for it.

It needs the mulawah breads- a standard size for my first visit, a ‘Perhaps i should move to a double table’ ‘double’ on my second- and they are superb. Piping hot, by turns blistered and doughy, crisp and buttery, your hands will be flecked with toasted sesame seeds: but where’s the harm in that? A recommendation, too, for the fresh lemon and mint juice, served by the pint.

Chicken madghout, half a bird served with a tomato-rich rice, seems strangely familiar at first. At first bite it is a dead ringer for arroz con cosas (literally, ‘rice with stuff’) from my mother’s (Castilian) table, but here it is spun through with the additional warmth of ginger, cinnamon and cloves. It’s lovely, of course, and the pressure-cooked chicken is practically asking to be pulled apart with your hands and savoured.

Throughout, there are several cups of the hot, rich maraq soup, animal fats pearling the surface, the hot liquid golden and spicy and aromatic. Bone broth before there was ‘bone broth’, and if you really have to be that person.

It takes time to make good kofte, he tells me, and although the city is groaning in good examples lightly crusted from the bars of the grill, this has an air of slower cooking about it. With more of that madghout rice and a fiery chilli sauce, it’s one to linger over.

You can come any time. This is your place, says one of the team as I pay.

You know, I think he might be on to something.

The Castle Restaurant

4 Neville St, Cardiff CF11 6LR
Saturday 9 am–10 pm
Sunday 9 am–10 pm
Monday 9 am–10 pm
Tuesday 9 am–10 pm
Wednesday 9 am–10 pm
Thursday 9 am–10 pm
Friday 2–10 pm