The South Kitchen, Albany Road, Cardiff: Yemeni restaurant review

‘Hello, nice to see you today…Lamb or chicken?’

Welcome to The South Kitchen, and the smallest menu in Cardiff.

You don’t pick your happy place. Your happy place picks you: and although The South Kitchen has very recently moved to Albany Road, it feels like business as usual.

Sure, it looks very different in here, in the former Ichiban- this is a much larger space than Broadway, which I told you about in October 2022- but the heart of what they do hasn’t changed.

The former default seating is now optional. Where I previously sat cross-legged on the floor, there are now tables for twenty or so flanking the room, although that more communal option is still available in two raised areas, where families are eating together after a school day.

It arrives in moments. A plastic sheet soon drapes the table and dinner is served. There’s little point coming if you’re a vegetarian, I’m afraid: mandi is everyday meat alchemy, where the cooking method weaves a subtle spell.

It’s all about patience, the meat gently simmered with spices until irreproachably tender, and that richly flavoured stock then used to cook the long grain rice at the bottom of the oven as the meat is suspended above.

Lamb or chicken, then. For the former there will be various cuts, depending when you arrive, but that meat whispers apart. Two tubs of raw chilli paste and a rich, nutty tahini, and you’re on your way. It’s a lovely thing, the rice gently perfumed and the meat just asking to be sucked away from bones, its fat melting and winningly gamey, .

You’ll need that box of Arabic-branded tissues, because this is not food to be dainty with and if your fingers aren’t soon gently reeking of animal fats then you have missed out, thank you very much.

See, mandi is my comfort food. There are places you immediately feel that genuine welcome, where the food can be as simple or as ornate as you like, but you know will make you happy. It has been a long day: the team has fed 250-odd people in a busy Cardiff Market, and with that undeniable buzz comes my back reminding me of every portion. And this is what I want more than anything in the city right now: to sit in front of a platter of meat and rice which I know will make everything right.

It’s just meat and rice, you’re thinking.

But what meat. And what rice. Those long grains, delicately separate, seem like the highest form of carby indulgence.

The fat under the chicken skin is rendered just enough for a suggestion of crispness, the flesh spice-dyed and beautifully done. It’s food to put a smile on your face. It’s half a bird for 10 (ten) pounds. You could eat the entire mandi menu for £25. And if you’re thinking what that does- or more pertinently- doesn’t buy you elsewhere, then who could possibly blame you.

‘Simply just Mandi’ goes the menu. And really, that’s enough. The move has brought the addition of salad and a soup, but really, that says it all. If the move to Albany Road brings The South Kitchen greater visibility and footfall, I’ll be very happy for them. And if this is your introduction to Yemeni food, then your life is about to get that tiny little bit better.

The South Kitchen, 167 Albany Rd, Cardiff CF24 3NT