Filipino-Bangladeshi restaurateur Omar Shah has a strong affinity with Kentish Town. It’s the neighbourhood where he has slowly built a restaurant empire that includes his parents’ original pan-Asian spot Bintang, the Caribbean/Latin American Guanabana, Mamasons Dirty Ice Cream, Cafe Mama & Sons, and his most recent bistro opening, Belly. Next month, Shah is launching a new concept called Bunso (which means youngest in Filipino), an all-day restaurant serving pastries, coffee, pasta and pizza, all tied together by the flavours he grew up with.
“I think people would be surprised by how much pizza and pasta are already part of Filipino food culture,” Shah tells Broadsheet, explaining how Filipino fast food favourite Jollibee’s spaghetti and US-founded and now Philippines-owned chain Shakey’s pizza have become staples in Filipino households. “Filipinos have always had this ability to adopt foods they love, make them their own, and eventually they just become part of everyday life.”
As Londoners have become increasingly acquainted with Filipino food, Shah wants the menu at Bunso to be “familiar” yet with a “playful, remixed” twist that allows his team’s strong skills in fermentation and doughmaking to shine. Belly’s seafood kaldereta (tomato-based stew) is reincarnated into a pie, served with mash and a house gravy; American-style pancakes come with salted duck egg sauce and a fish sauce caramel; house-made pastas sit side-by-side with Filipino kinilaw (a raw seafood dish traditionally cured with coconut or sugarcane vinegar) on the evening menu; and New York-style pizzas are topped with longganisa (sweet, garlicky sausage) and calamansi hot honey. Daytime guests can enjoy the matcha and coffee menu, while those lingering into the later hours can sip on Filipino-inspired cocktails or low-intervention wines while swaying to the tunes of “old-school R&B, hip hop, and OPM (Original Pilipino Music)” coming from the hi-fi sound system.
Shah is adamant he wants Bunso to be “a proper neighbourhood restaurant” where throughout the day, “the food changes, the music changes, and the energy of the room changes, but hopefully, the feeling stays the same”. Reflecting Kentish Town’s diversity is front and centre in Shah’s mind; he explains how the spirit of community is “still very real” in the neighbourhood, where businesses that have been run by the same family for generations now coexist with newer players.
“I’d like to think our businesses have played a small part in the evolution of this side of Kentish Town as well,” he says. “One of the nicest things is when people who have lived here for years come up to me and say they’ve seen the positive impact the restaurants have had on the area. That means a lot to me. More than anything, I feel genuinely privileged to be in a position where I can create spaces in the neighbourhood where people meet, eat, celebrate, go on dates, bring their families, and make memories.”
Bunso opens at 1a Hawley Road, NW1 8RP in Kentish Town in September.
