LONDON
© Cristian Barnett
© Cristian Barnett
© Cristian Barnett
© Cristian Barnett
New York nostalgia and French brasserie confidence, which sounds contradictory but in practice was entirely cohesive.
We ate, as any sensible group should when faced with a menu of this range, in the spirit of enthusiastic sharing- dishes arriving in a procession that revealed the kitchen’ s breadth with impressive ease and led the team across familiar favourites while daring some to try new flavours.
The raw farm vegetables set the tone with admirable conviction; a reminder that great produce, presented without interference, requires nothing more than something excellent alongside it for dipping. Vivid, seasonal, properly crunchy. The mushroom flatbread with fresh mozzarella and pickled onions was the first dish to generate genuine silence at the table as hands reached in all directions to enjoy the pillowy soft dough which carried the earthiness of the mushrooms, the yielding stretch of the melted cheese all cut through with vinegary precision of the pickled onions.
The first to admit that I’ m not often excited by‘ the salad’, the kale salad with pears, Pevensey Blue and sourdough crisps was a genuinely clever dish. Something of a quiet statement of intent, the excellent and undersung Sussex blue cheese brought a gentle grassy funk that found perfect counterpoint in the sweetness of ripe pear, while the crisp provided textural punctuation. That a restaurant so thoroughly steeped in New York confidence should be celebrating the dairy of our Sussex neighbour felt quietly charming, and we were rather pleased about it.
The prawn cocktail deserves a paragraph of its own, if only because it arrived without apology or irony. Great, properly pink, properly sweet prawns of a size and quality that reminded you why this dish has never gone away lay placed on a slate accompanied by the simplest of dressings, executed with the confidence of a kitchen team that knows their produce and why it works. Yet, it was followed by the chicken Milanese which promptly stole attention: the crisp crumb offset with bright lemon caper vinaigrette and the bitterness of chicory. Though perhaps proving that sometimes it’ s the simplest that wins out, the cacio e pepe proved the dish of the afternoon. Ribbons of fresh pasta, silken and yielding, arrived coated in a sauce of such creamy, peppery depth that the table grinned in collective appreciation. Crowned with confit egg yolk
that collapsed slowly at the touch of the first fork, it elevated the richness of the dish to new levels. Rome would have approved.
Dessert- the house tiramisu- closed proceedings with a considered confidence of a restaurant that knows how to end a meal. Properly coffee-soaked, properly mascarpone-rich, with a generous cocoa dusting, it was the little details of being served in individual cut glass dishes that reminded us( again) that this was no ordinary lunch stop.
Twenty8 NoMad is that increasingly rare proposition: a hotel restaurant that earns its place on the list through proper merit rather than geographical convenience. The room alone rewards a visit, but Shuman and Gregoire have ensured that what arrives, from both kitchen and bar, justifies the billing entirely.
As team lunches go, it has set a precedent that will prove difficult to follow.
hilton. com / en / hotels / lonnmnd-nomadlondon / dining / twenty8-nomad twenty8 _ nomad www. insidekent. co. uk • 103