Five Minutes With: SOKU @ Assemble

What made you decide to set up SOKU?

Alana: My background is in marketing, so I’ve never worked a day in hospitality in my life! Lawrence always wanted his own restaurant, so we decided to do the pop-up on the side of our normal jobs. He was working up at the Michelin-starred Hjem in Hexham, and we just decided to do it for family and friends on our days off. We were essentially working two jobs and it just really took off!

Then we got the opportunity to have our residency at The Lockup in Ouseburn and ended up quitting our jobs – it’s gone from zero to 100 so quickly! That’s how it started and it’s blossomed into where we’re at now with our residency here at Assemble which is working really well.

What was it like leaving behind your ‘day jobs’ and opening SOKU?

Alana: It was very daunting, especially because I’d never worked in hospitality before. My first-ever shift in hospitality was our first pop-up at Tiny Tiny – I’ve gone from no experience to being a restaurant manager! I’ve still got a lot to learn but couldn’t

What made you decide to go the pop-up route rather than opening a permanent restaurant?

Lawrence: A lot of it stems from the current economic climate. Opening a regular restaurant can cost anywhere between £50,000 and £250,000 and it’s hard to save enough money to be able to afford to open your own restaurant.

Of course, you can get loans, but we didn’t really want to be in masses of debt either and by doing residency pop-ups you’re able to get your doors open, get a name for yourself, get repeat custom and start building enough savings to be able to get your own brick-and-mortar venue. It’s still quite a new concept but I think over the next five years we’ll see a lot more young chefs taking this route. It’s a hard industry to start up in so this format is kind of like a gateway for young chefs to do their own thing.

It works great with Assemble too because we’re helping each other out and complementing each other – they bring in customers for drinks and then they discover us. It’s been a really good way to start off the business.

How did your travels in Asia inspire SOKU’s cuisine?

Alana: That’s kind of where the idea came from! I think travelling changes your perspective and while we both loved our former jobs, we wanted to work for ourselves and achieve something ourselves. We were sitting on a beach in Vietnam talking about it and came up with the idea of doing a pop-up when we got back home and seeing how it goes.

Lawrence: I’d always loved Asian food – Thai food, Japanese, Chinese – and the spices, aromas and punch of flavour. Because it’s so cheap out there, we ate out for every meal – I didn’t cook for about three months!

We just ate and tried as much as we possibly could and the entire time we were away, I had a notebook in my backpack and would jot down what was good and what wasn’t good and what I wanted to do. I was taking little bits and pieces from what we had and saying, “This is what I want to do when we’re back home”.

It was such a big learning curve and I tried to take in as much as I could from our travels there. And I’m going to have to go back some day – I’ll need a refresher at some point!

Lawrence, how has working at some of the region’s top restaurants helped prepare you for leading SOKU’s kitchen?

Lawrence: I’ve worked in hospitality since I was 16 or 17 and started out doing front-of-house work. Working at Meat:Stack was the first time I started getting into the kitchen, and after that I went to work in a café for a while before getting a job at The Patricia. That was where the base of my learning was – it had quite refined dishes that let the ingredients speak for themselves.

After that, there was The Broad Chare which is an absolute machine of a restaurant and super busy – 70 covers on a weeknight, 150 to 200 covers on the weekends. Cooking refined food at that kind of pace was completely different!

When we came back from travelling, I got offered the job as sous chef at Hjem and took in all those notes of British produce, Mediterranean-style dishes and the refinement of the Michelin star.

I take everything I’ve learned and then take classic dishes from Thailand or Vietnam or Japan but use British produce and create a Mediterranean wine bar-style dish that mixes all those influences together. I think it’s quite individual – there aren’t many people doing what we’re doing and I think that keeps things interesting for guests.

I’ve worked at some great restaurants and I want to be one of those great restaurants one day – the kind of places that people aspire to have and that young chefs want to come and work hard at.

And, Alana, how has your background in marketing helped establish SOKU?

Lawrence: SOKU wouldn’t be what it is without Alana’s marketing and graphic design. It’s been as important as what I’ve been doing in the kitchen.

Alana: I always say that I bring people in and Lawrence keeps them coming back! I have graphic design experience but I’m more of a marketer than a graphic designer, so it’s always nice when someone asks who does our marketing and I can tell them it’s me!

Why did you settle on the name SOKU? Does it have any particular meaning?

Alana: Essentially, SOKU is a loose translation of a Buddhist term for “in the present moment”. SOKU’s tagline is “here and now in the present moment”. When you’re sat having a meal, you’re not on your phone – you’re engrossed in the conversation no matter who you’re with and you’re really present in the moment and experience rather than when you’re eating at home and watching TV.

Lawrence: It’s about someone coming out for a meal and for the two hours that they’re in here, it’s an escape from the world and you’re just present. It doesn't matter what’s going on at home or at work – you just want to come and enjoy yourself and be well looked after. Part of our ethos is having the standards of a top-end restaurant but also being super approachable and a bit more casual. We want to make sure that the time that people are spending here is a distraction from the world and that they have a great time and want to come back.

What is your favourite dish that you’ve created at SOKU?

Lawrence: I’ve had a couple! One of our early dishes here at Assemble was a squid noodle dish. The squid itself was the noodle and we paired it with a whey reduction but with loads of Sichuan and pink pepper and a soy egg yolk. It was kind of like our take on an Italian cacio e pepe and it went down really well.

Alana: My personal favourite has been the chocolate mousse with crystallised white chocolate, passionfruit curd and makrut lime on top. That’s been a big hit over the past couple of weeks. It’s just come off the menu but it’ll come back at some point.

Lawrence: We had a dish recently with oxtail which is slow braised and picked down, bound with red curry spices and peanuts, put inside a dumpling and served with a beef consommé. It’s similar to an Italian dish called tortellini en brodo but with lots of amazing Asian flavours. I think it’s a niche kind of fusion.

Alana: The menu changes weekly as well so there’s always so much going on!

What plans do you have for the future – another residency, or a permanent restaurant perhaps?

Alana: We’re here at Assemble for the foreseeable at the moment, but the plan was always to get our own spot. The pop-up situation has been really good for us when it comes to learning about different locations and reaching different audiences but getting our own space is definitely on the agenda – we’ve just barely had time to look with being so busy!

Lawrence: I’m a perfectionist so if I don’t feel 100% about a site or location then it won’t be the one. If this is going to be our flagship restaurant, it has to be perfect – I don’t want us to rush into it!

SOKU is currently in residence at Assembly, 3 Old Eldon Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7JG. For more information visit www.instagram.com/soku.kitchen. 

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