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While wife, Sarah, who previously looked after the restaurant’s reservations is now a full-time mum to their three-year-old son and toddler daughter, Summers is being kept busy juggling the growing Bubala brand of vegetarian/vegan restaurants.
And he’s has hands full with his restaurant team now numbering 130. "That's a lot of people to look after and it's a big deal for us. We want them to be as happy as possible, but, you know, every time the numbers go, it's like, wow, that's another 40 to 50! I feel like I've grown exponentially in age in the last five years.”
His most recent restaurant opened at the end of April, but it has been a year since Summers first saw (and fell in love with) the site. While all three Bubalas are situated in historically rich areas of London — the others are in Spitalfields and Soho — this building has a totally different style.
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“I didn’t want them to all look the same. This is a new build with six-metre-high ceilings and high arches. It’s also the largest — we’ve got 75 seats downstairs plus 25 on the mezzanine plus an outside terrace.”
With the cost of ingredients and utilities rising fast, I wonder how he has coped with the increasingly challenging trading conditions. The trained chef, who grew up in Chigwell, told me he’s used to overcoming adversity. He opened his first restaurant immediately prior to a world pandemic and then signed the lease to the second during the tail end of the Covid period.
“I guess that that gives you confidence, right? If you can survive that, you feel like, you’ve faced quite a few challenges already.”
And rather than going straight to price increases to plug the gap he and his team have instead sought opportunities to keep costs down. “We looked at what we were paying our suppliers, and made changes. Like opening Spitalfields earlier in the day. It didn’t cost us any more in terms of labour but means we can take a few more bookings earlier — and actually, people are eating earlier. So that was a nice one to do.”
“I think what sets us apart from others is that we offer something that's generous. I hope people come away thinking, that's good value. What I don't want to do is change that feeling. I just want to make sure that whatever we do now doesn't affect the way people feel about Bubala.”
Perhaps it’s their meat-free menu that enables them to provide ample portions, but there does feel like an abundance of food when eating there.
From their inception they’ve offered a ‘Bubala Knows Best’ set menu. The chance to experience a curated journey through all their flavours without the angst of deciding what to go for. At £46 per person for a feast of ten dishes including laffah bread, baba ghanoush, falafel (with tahini, amba sumac and onions) and their signature oyster mushroom skewers it feels plentiful — you’re guaranteed to leave feeling (over) full or with doggy bags/boxes full of your leftovers.
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Summers moved from a career in finance to follow his heart (and stomach) into the restaurant world; studying for a chef’s diploma before spending time at Soho’s Palomar restaurant and Josh Katz’s Berber & Q where cooking over fire is a key element to the menu.
While at both those restaurants, he’d clocked how popular vegetables were on the Middle Eastern menus and decided to take them from support act to centre stage. He and Bubala’s former exec chef Helen Graham (who has since left to follow her own projects) developed a vegetarian and vegan menu with flavours so huge you really didn’t (and don’t) miss the meat.
This new Bubala will retain menu classics like the confit potato ‘latkes’ (a stack of melting confit potato layers) with garlic toum; umami-packed oyster mushroom skewers and smooth, creamy hummus with burnt butter as he knows these are much-loved favourites. He will however be introducing new dishes that will be specific to Kings Cross.
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As this branch features a wood fired oven, he and Bubala’s head chef, Ben Rand (who most recently had been cooking at food-forward members’ club) Birch in Hertfordshire, have worked together on the new dishes that make the most of it.
These include a riff on Middle Eastern rice and lentil classic, mujadara and a coconut and cherry basbousa cake (which is made with semolina) topped with cardamom custard that’s baked in the oven. “The mujadara has an almost risotto-like consistency and is baked to order and gets those lovely almost charred crispy bits. The cake is absolutely delicious — unbelievable” he enthuses.
There’s also a new spin on their seed-coated, honey-slicked haloumi, which here is topped with orange marmalade packed with sunflower seeds.
What’s next for the young parent and his growing family? In the short term he has more work to do at Kings Cross — “we’ll be opening the mezzanine for private events for up to 25 people” — and will also be dividing his remaining attention between his other two restaurants.
Look out for him too doing a guest appearance in August at Berber & Q, curating a menu as part of their ten-year anniversary celebrations. “I’d like to do something unique — probably completely new dishes.”
In the longer term he is looking to grow the brand with more sites. Catering is also on his radar: “We do quite a bit ad hoc, and by the end of this year or early next year we really want to grow that side of the company and start pushing that. Our food leans really well into catering on large scale, for weddings and big events. And also, obviously, we have got a point of difference where it's always going to be vegetarian. We’ve got a wedding for 120 coming up in May and we did Wilderness [for 300] last year. There’s a big opportunity there.”
Sounds like it will be a few more Bubalas and a long while before he catches up on that sleep.
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