I’d almost forgotten about Souk Medina after having briefly stopped by for tea and baklava with Gary on some random cold evening last year, but as soon as Chris began describing where he was planning to have his birthday, I began to recall the delicious smells that were wafting past us as the waiters brought in huge trays full of food for other guests.

On Friday I finally got the opportunity to sample the food for myself! We were there as a large group for Chris’ birthday, so we had the entire front room upstairs to ourselves with comfy sofas, nice tranquil lighting and colourful decor. Gary and I arrived a bit later than everyone else, plainly because I’d forgotten where the restaurant was, so we had to speak up a few times before our Souk cocktails (essentially a mojito only with figs in it) arrived.

Food service was fast and frequent, we’d ordered the set menu to cater for all 11 people that had showed up, and there were definately some nice parts to the menu, but it wasn’t as mind blowing as the smells that had lured me in last time.

The set menu promises quite a lot to the taste buds:

• Vine leaves
• Humous with pitta bread
• Batata harra (sauteed spicy potato cubes)
• Calamari
• Couscous
• Merguez (lamb sausages)
• Lamb tagine (with prunes and almonds)
• Chicken tagine (with saffron and herbs)
• Spinach and feta tagine
• Chickpeas tagine
• Mixed fish tagine

The starters were lovely, vine leaves were tasty, humous was really nice, the spicy potato was fun and had a delayed kick to the spicyness which was quite fun, but the calamari was a bit on the rubbery side and I wasn’t that keen on the sauce that it was served with, nor was anyone else as we were all offering our calamari to each other at the same time! In fairness to them though, they did bring us another round of vine leaves, humous and pitta to make up for it.

The tagines were excellent, the chicken was really tasty, the lamb was a little too sweet for my liking but was still delicious and just melted in your mouth, and the merguez was pretty good too, I wasn’t too fond of the mixed fish tagine or any of the veggie tagines, and the couscous was really plain and unflavoured which was a bit of a shame.

For dessert we had two rounds of baklava (okay really, it was only me that had two rounds of baklava and ended up going home with a stomach ache) and some mint tea, I absolutely love baklava, you just know it’s so bad for you.

Amidst the feast, we were treated to a belly dance, though I’m not sure that she appreciated the fact that we all burst out laughing when she managed to move her boobs individually on their own, that’s definately a talent to put on your CV!

Overall, a mixed bag of an experience, if the food was more consistantly great then it’d be a definate winner. Also it’s a real shame that the smoking laws prevent you from using a hookah indoors, we could smell the apple tobaco from indoors and wanted to try some for ourselves but didn’t really fancy having to go outside in the cold to do so.