Hit Trinidadian Restaurant Has Left Old Spitalfields Market After 10 Months

Spitalfields’ hit Trinidadian restaurant and rum bar Limin’ — which opened, on the site formerly occupied by Nuno Mendes’ Taberna do Mercado, in December last year — has closed. Owner Sham Mahabir, previously a marketing manager for the the casual restaurant Canteen, started Limin’ as a pop-up which had been scheduled to close after New Year celebrations on the 1 January. Its popularity — and, for the market itself, flexible occupancy — extended its stay until the end of August.

Mahabir paid tribute to his restaurant, which had opened with the express mission of illustrating the plurality of culinary influences on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, in a message to Eater. He said: “We popped up in Old Spitalfields Market for 10 weeks late last year and stayed trading for 10 months. I can safely say I have put my heart and soul into Limin’.

“It’s been an incredible journey and we are very grateful to OSM for the opportunity to try out Limin’ out and to host our Jerk & Beyond festival too. We’d like to thank the Caribbean community too who embraced early on and now describe Limin’ as a ‘home away from home’.”

It attracted a cult-following among the Trinidadian and wider Caribbean diaspora in London, received an endorsement from rapper Wiley, and, after two months had registered itself at number one Tripadvisor.

Popular dishes, which sought to show Trinidad’s South Asian, African, and Chinese culinary influences: chicken wings with soy, garlic, and roasted chilli; fried bara doubles with chick pea curry, cucumber, and pepper sauce; buss-up-shut roti bread with curry chicken, curry goat, or spinach; chicken pelau; curry crab dumplings; and fried bake with salt fish.

Mahabir also said he hopes there’s a future for the brand, as he looks to secure a permanent site for the restaurant — as close as possible to the Spitalfields location. “As for the future, we are working on securing a permanent site, taking [his festival] Jerk & Beyond around the U.K., running other ground-breaking events and launching our own rum,” he said.

The name, an abbreviated form of “liming,” is a Trinidad expression meaning “hanging out.”

More soon.