'It's not the rush of the novelty-seeker but repeat custom that floats Michael Nadra's boat'
Smart suburbs sprout smart restaurants: the likes of Fraiche on the Wirral, Riva in Barnes, or The Kitchin in Edinburgh. This lot are perfectly happy to leave all that "achingly hip" nonsense to gadflies in city centres, and concentrate on sending their affluent punters out into the night well-fed, thoroughly lubricated and vowing to return. It's not the rush of the novelty-seeker but repeat custom that floats these boats.
Michael Nadra has made his name in the suburbs, Chiswick specifically, with his brand of safe, luxurious, classic cuisine. His second outpost is in Primrose Hill, another postcode amply supplied with a comfortably padded potential clientele: can he repeat the formula? Very probably.
Nowadays, menus tend to feature the terse likes of "veal chop" or "Herdwick lamb shank". Not chez Nadra. A typical listing at his swanky new premises (formerly Sardo Canale) goes like this: "sautéed foie gras & roasted quail with savoy cabbage, potato galette and Armagnac cherries". With its tasting menus, ceviche and tempura section and accessible prix fixes (£18 for three courses), the whole thing shrieks, "Take me seriously!" at full volume.
You wouldn't want to approach Nadra's menus after a session at the splendid martini bar he's installed in this striking, canal-side building: trying to decipher the many, many pages after a couple of these lethal numbers is like trying to knit fog.
We're seated in an atmospheric cobbled tunnel, formerly access for barge horses and very, very brown. It's so atmospheric that it's hard to see a thing; not a huge loss, because most of the food appears to be very, very brown too. That foie dish, say: if I'd spotted it elsewhere, I'd think, "Aha! It's the old retro tongue-in-cheek". But, no: it's as earnest as our servers. It's also flawlessly realised, the kind of thing – melting, lacquered liver, sour-sweetness of cherries, crunch of potato – that makes you wonder why certain combos went out of fashion. And makes me sound like a MasterChef judge.
Nadra is not afraid of a big flavour: glazes and reductions come with mighty whacks of bone-stock meatiness and there are meadows of herbs. After being assaulted by the amount of garlic in a dish of lamb rump with tiny violet artichokes, a polite-looking ratatouille and rosemary gnocchi, I smell like a puttanesca for days. He's better when he reins it in a bit: pasta parcels of duckmeat in a brown (yes) consommé that at first tastes underseasoned until the depth of sheer duckiness slaps you in the chops.
Here's another gob-full: "free-range corn-fed coqulete [sic] with coco de paimpol, caramelised onions, broccoli purée & thyme jus". It's less impressive than it sounds: the poussin seems to have forgotten it's an actual chicken, and is resoundingly upstaged by its, erm, brown, herby glaze. Paimpol? I should coco. It's hard to make much of an impact as a mere bean when bullied by broccoli and thyme. The ceviches and tempuras – we try a tuna of one and the now-ubiquitous (and usually frozen) softshell crab of the other – owe more to French technique than anything less European.
This is a soignée, already mature-feeling restaurant. But apart from the martini bar, with its skilful and enchantingly flirtatious French bartender, it's a wee bit constipated. You get the impression that staff are pining for some lovely big cloches to galumph about with. If Michelin were to hand Nadra the sparkler I suspect he hankers after, the audience who needs this kind of affirmation would love the place to bits.
I'll be interested to see if the denizens of Primrose Hill – an edgier bunch than those of Chiswick – will embrace it with the fervour afforded its sibling. I'd go back for that bar and an enticing brunch, all Manx kippers and treacle bacon and French toast, which would make real sense of their canal-side terrace on a sunny day. But until it unclenches, I'll leave the restaurant to the grown-ups.
• Michael Nadra Primrose Hill 42 Gloucester Avenue, London NW1, 020-7722 2800. Open all week, lunch noon-2.30pm (11am-4pm Sat & Sun); dinner, 6-11pm (10.30pm Sun). Three-course à la carte meal with drinks and service, about £60 a head.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 7/10
Value for money 7/10
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