Is London’s raucous West End ready for khoresht bademjan? This inventive new Persian restaurant has as good a chance as any of making it work…
Nutshell, the new modern Iranian restaurant on St Martin’s Lane, central London, perched close to Nelson’s column, requires a personal battle of one’s own to reach on a Saturday evening. Theatreland in full yahoo merges with tottering hen parties, meandering mini-breakers, school trips, emergency response vehicles and bin trucks. You are either insane to open a classy, innovative, Persian restaurant here, serving ornate new spins on meze, grills and stovetop stuffs, or you are very, very clever.
For passing footfall, Nutshell may seem slightly mysterious. Words like jojeh, borani and kubideh have yet to slip into regional UK parlance for chicken chunks, dip or minced meat. Frankly, Britain has as yet accepted the aubergine only very tepidly in all its bulbous, purple majesty. Yet here on the Nutshell menu, one will find it stewed with pearl onions and split chickpeas in a khoresht bademjan; or pulverised and strewn with feta, crisp shallot, blackcurrant and walnuts in a sublime take on baba ganoush. Similarly, walnut, which Brits admire mostly in a whip, is loud and proud in Nutshell’s panir sabzi, in the lamb meatballs, and diced roughly under the grilled cauliflower fesenjun. Of course, if you’re one of the UK’s 70,000 Iranian-born residents, you may think: “Nutshell, a new cool place! I’ll take my father as a treat!” knowing in your heart he’ll say: “I don’t want Caspian olive tapenade with rainbow radish. Why did Azerbaijan in Hammersmith shut? I want kalle-pache with the boiled sheep’s head looking at me! Now that was Persian food.”
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