Nessa, London: ‘It feels a bit like the future’ — restaurant review

There used to be a border down the middle of the West End. Not exactly an Iron Curtain, more a shabby velvet one, which divided the decent, fun, creative and bohemian restaurants of Soho from the dinosaurs of Mayfair. East of Regent Street you could get Italian, Thai, Szechuan and grubby BBQ; to the West, you’d get nursery food, stink-eye from the wine waiter and a shooting pain in your wallet.

In recent years, the border has blurred. The hedgies of Jermyn Street seem to have developed more eclectic tastes and there are places in Soho which now have a kind of establishment cachet. But old spooks like me will still pause when they pass Checkpoint Charlie — that point at the end of Brewer Street where it loses its identity as it approaches Regent Street.

It is fitting that chef Tom Cenci has chosen this spot to open Nessa, a place with glossy Mayfair looks that somehow conspires to feel like a Soho “face” that’s been there for ever. The room has marble, cushions, new-old oak woodwork and not a single whitewashed brick or length of AC duct visible to the naked eye. It’s elegant and relaxed, comfortable for those from either side of the wall. It feels a bit like the future.

It is, inevitably, I suppose, a “sharing concept”, which put my charming server in a bit of a spot. She was obviously worried that I was dining alone and might be lonely or sad. I had to reassure her I wouldn’t inadvertently permit myself to be under- or overfed.

“Heritage tomato panzanella, black pepper croutons, jalapeño” seemed like a healthy starting point. The tomatoes were fat, ripe and sweet in a way that made me misty for the old days. I’d have to question whether such smart croutons, rather than rough, torn, stale bread, fit in with the cucina povera roots of a panzanella, but I welcomed the fresh bite of the equally inauthentic jalapeño. There were also pomegranate seeds strewn hither and yon and possibly pomegranate molasses in the dressing, so I think we can safely assume they’re playing fast and loose with the nomenclature. It was a brilliant combination. A little sweet, but perhaps that’s what we need to do to our tomatoes these days.

I want to praise “Black pudding brioche brown butter noisette” from the rafters. Not just because the sweet, fried bread has a hole punched out of its centre and a slice of exceptional blood pudding seamlessly inserted, but also because Cenci has shown positively monastic restraint in not putting a bloody egg on it. It would look so ’grammable with a “soft fried hen’s egg” draped over the top, and it would be totally wrong. Instead, he serves it uncovered, winking its cyclopean eye while bathing in a pool of what I’d pin as a sauce ravigote — a kind of runny, hot vinaigrette. Astringent and packed with wilted fresh herbs, it’s a gorgeous thing. It soaks into the bread, a counterpoint to the fudgy, fatty pudding. Proper style ancien French charcuterie at its very best.

I reckon they put “Chicken cordon bleu” on the menu just for me, a hack with an ill-concealed kink for restaurant antiques that probably deserves a special-interest community on the Dark Web. It’s a chicken breast, stuffed with gruyère and ham, breaded and fried sometime before 1972.

It comes on a bed of monk’s beard (AKA agretti), grilled celery and green olives. The sauce is a thin opaque liquid, more like a Japanese broth perhaps — damn, this guy doesn’t believe in thickening sauces — strongly flavoured of chicken and with a smoky undertone, possibly from scorching the celery. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, bloody gorgeous.

A little sad, though, to realise that chicken cordon bleu may have run its natural lifespan. Back in the day, the whole thing would have been made from a brine-injected, intensively reared chicken, cooked right the way through in a deep fat fryer and served with a lethal molten core. At Nessa, they seem to finish it in an oven (damn that open kitchen), and I’m not sure modern, high-quality and doubtless free-range chicken breast can take all the extra heating and fiddling without overcooking and tightening up. Though it came neatly pre-sliced, it took some vigorous sawing to break it down further.

Which prompts me to add at this juncture that I am delighted to have discovered something entirely novel and completely trivial about which to whine in a restaurant review: some large dinner plates inevitably develop a slight warp in the firing process and do not, therefore, sit flat on a perfectly smooth marble tabletop. A wobbly table can put an unusual level of stress on a meal, but a plate that rattles loudly every time you fork something and rotates freely when you cut food, unless you steady it with a second hand, can put the absolute mockers on your main course.

I notice that the chefs fettle the plates on a marble pass so they should have spotted a rogue one and changed it. Do not mistake this for a complaint. I will not be the solo diner who sent the dish back for a change of crockery, so can we just chalk this one up to experience and maybe ask the chefs to keep watch? If you can spin it, bin it.

I’m self-evidently nobody’s Goldilocks, so it’s rare for me to walk into a place and find it “just right”. It’s an ambitious target, to create a new and seemingly timeless Soho classic, but by nodding respectfully to the power and opaque hierarchies of the East while displaying all the dangerously attractive decadence of the West, I believe Cenci and Nessa may have hit it on the button.

Follow Tim on Twitter @TimHayward, on Instagram @timhayward and email him at [email protected]

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