Somaha after dark: meat, wine and a table that runs late

There's a name for the version of dinner where nobody's watching the clock, and Somaha has just made it the whole point. Meat N' Chill sounds like a tagline until you're actually sitting there — a board of something off the Boucherie Corner in the middle of the table, a glass that keeps getting topped up, and no real reason to ask for the bill before you're ready.

The room sets the tone before the food does. Brick, low pendant light, dried corn and chilies strung along a shelf like it's someone's actual kitchen rather than a dining room built to photograph well. It doesn't ask you to dress for it. It asks you to sit down and stay a while.

The menu is built the same way the room feels — for passing things around rather than guarding your own plate. A flank steak (bavette) or a rib eye from the Boucherie Corner, a shared charcuterie board to start, sides that land in the middle of the table instead of next to one set of cutlery. Even the pasta and the Cambodian Corner dishes read like things meant to be tried two bites at a time rather than finished solo.

None of it moves fast, and that's deliberate. A table at Somaha tends to outlast its original plan — one more glass, one more shared plate, a dessert nobody quite ordered but everyone eats from. If the night runs long, that's not a delay. That's the whole idea working.