The Sunday Times
Chitra Ramaswamy made her way to the latest venue from Nick Nairn, a 1990s daytime TV chef whose previous restaurant on the same site, Nick’s (fka Jam Jar by Nick Nairn) burnt down three years ago.
The menu offered Scottish/European classics with some nods to present trends, but Chitra found the food so bad it made her shudder. An “unforgivably unseasoned fillet of hake” was “underdone, wet and mushy”, while a “gigantic” chicken kiev was stuffed with “katsu butter that tastes exactly like the curry sauce you get on chips from the chippie…, it’s as unfinishable as a steak challenge in a Texan roadhouse.” A £5 side of buttered greens is “boiled to 1970s levels, sprinkled with something reminiscent of sand, and is a strong contender for worst mouthful of food I’ve eaten in a while”.
“I wanted Nairn’s to be better,” Chitra moans. “He is, after all, a Scottish
institution and was once this country’s most famous chef.”
