B
aity is a refreshing addition to Walton
Street, offering great home cooked
food without the usual over-priced,
under-achieving Chelsea frills. Meaning
‘my home’ in Arabic, Baity indeed feels like some-
one’s home, albeit someone who churns out
delicious food constantly. The decor is fresh and
relaxed, with unusual zinc topped wooden
tables, aquamarine Thonet bentwood chairs and
a pretty garden revealed through glass sliding
doors which will be heaven in high summer.
Chef Joudie Kalla-Anagnou and former fash-
ion publicist Christina Mouratoglou, launched
Baity Kitchen in late 2010 to provide a new
offering of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean
delicacy in unpretentious and friendly surround-
ings. The cuisine, inspired by Joudie and
Christina’s Palestinian and Greek backgrounds, is
a different dish each morning, using fresh and
seasonal ingredients. Having trained at
Pengelley’s, Daphne’s and Papillion, Joudie does
much of the cooking herself and also offers a
catering service for up to 250 guests and cook-
ery classes for children and adults.
The dishes are cooked and laid out on the
deli counter for you to muse over and choose a
selection, then heated if required and brought to
your table.There’s a great salad selection to star t,
including a deluxe Greek salad with huge olives
and fresh feta cheese, red onions and herbs, a
puy lentil, rice and pomegranate creation and a
whole globe ar tichoke with vinaigrette. It seems
to be the norm to order a big selection that
everyone can share as the serving sizes are
enormous. We tried an irresistible white truffle
macaroni cheese, a dish I haven’t seen since an
ecstatic encounter in California. This one didn’t
disappoint either with the combination of truffle,
cream and cheese an unbeatable treat. We also
had a beef stew, very Mediterranean, with a rich
tomato sauce and red and green pepper. The
classic Greek gemista - peppers and aubergine
stuffed with rice – were filling and did a great job
of soaking up the beef stew. If we’d had room,
we might have gone for the lamb kufta, chicken
kievs stuffed with gruyere... in fact there weren’t
any dishes that we wouldn’t have liked to try; we
were just thwar ted by the size of our stomachs.
To round it off there is a fantastic selection of
deli deser ts to take away or eat in – fresh, warm,
triple chocolate cookies, date cookies, rhubarb
BAITY KITCHEN
172 Walton Street,
London SW3 2JL
BITE
FOOD
cake, banana and chocolate cake and soft brownies, all
washed down by refreshing fresh mint tea.
For the Chelsea-ites who can’t bear the thought
of cooking and washing up on a daily basis, all of the
dishes on the menu are available to take home and
reheat yourself. The Kitchen is open for breakfast,
lunch, tea and dinner and is ideal for a lunch whilst out
shopping, or an early supper before heading out to
the local bars and clubs of South Kensington and
Knightsbridge.The restaurant area is bright and airy in
the day, and at about 8pm the lights are dimmed and
candles are lit, creating more of an evening ambiance.
The clientele is generally smar t but unpretentious,
some just stopping by for a coffee, others having a
drink over a feisty game of backgammon, and people
like us with eyes far bigger than our stomachs.