Les Nénettes, Clapton, restaurant review – ‘classic southern French’
Très bien: the exterior of Les Nénettes. Images: Les Nénettes
When I walked into Les Nénettes, a new French restaurant on Lower Clapton Road, it was a balmy evening, and seeing my friend drinking one, I immediately ordered a gin and tonic. I shortly realised that there was a far more interesting menu of French apéritifs – but the story of the evening, it turns out, was that Nénettes’ tantalising menu demands more than a single visit.
It started going awry before we even ordered, with the basket of bread that was placed on our table with our menus. My partner is fond of telling me that only an amateur fills up on bread. However this came with a ramekin of soft unsalted butter: thick, creamy, like an organic butter with the taste dial turned way up. I would guess it was sourced from Normandy, and is of the kind that is only spread in a thick layer and is crucial to a proper jambon beurre. I popped one hunk of bread into my mouth, then another. Then another.
We ordered some “snacks” and a second basket of bread was deposited on the table. My first impression of the artichoke and green olive tapenade was that of a rushing familiarity: the word gets bandied about so much, I hadn’t realised it had been years since I’d had a classic southern French tapenade. It was excellent, tangy and herby and garlicky.
The merguez, chickpeas and harissa sounded pedestrian, but the hunks of spicy lamb sausage and chickpeas were swimming in a garlicky, lemon zesty, oily mess that was crying to be scooped up with yet more baguette. At this point we realised that if we were to make it to pudding, there would be no room for actual starters, let alone saucisson sec and rillettes, or the enticing Calvados camembert.
It took us a good half hour to decide mains. We deliberated, then passed on, our friendly waiter’s admonishment to try the cassoulet. A winter food, it was too incongruous with the mild springtime weather that briefly graced us that week. After hesitating between sea trout and mussels, and a vegetarian special, we decided on the côte de boeuf, which stood alone, in bold typeface, at the top of the menu. At £50, it ostensibly served two but we found out that it could easily feed three to four hungry builders.
The beef, which I was told comes from the organic butcher Daylesford, had the characteristic marbling of rib eye and a trim of delectable fat, which I devoured with no reservation. Despite a valiant effort on the part of my dining companion, who looked a little worse for wear by the end, we were unable to finish the heaping platter, and had to take some home.
We chose simple sides: steamed green beans and frites. The latter were too cold and the only unexceptional part of the meal. The béarnaise, also, was more the consistency of mayo than hollandaise, but it seemed scarcely important as it would have been a scandal to compromise the meat with sauce. We washed it all down with a delicate Pinot Noir.
Wounded but still alive, we limped onto dessert where the obvious choice was the île flottante – a classic French dessert that in its simplicity needs to be superbly done to be good at all. The freshly beaten meringue, sitting demurely atop a bowl of warm crème anglaise, was light and airy, and left a creamy finish on the tongue. I was so absorbed by my pudding that I paid little attention to what my dining companion was saying, but I believe she was happy with her chocolate enrobed poached pear. A single measure of reasonably priced Poire Williams to finish, and we were off, having eaten too much and yet far too little.
I remember some time ago describing the now defunct restaurant Verden as being out of place in Clapton, and in retrospect, I pondered why I did not feel the same about the equivalently pricey Nénettes (does the mineral water really need to be French, and £4?). Perhaps time has changed my attitude: Hackney is now inexorably a foodie destination, whereas two years ago, Verden felt like it had been airdropped into Clapton by a PR company. In that respect perhaps Nénettes gets an easy pass, although the diners were a comfortable mix of ages and ethnicities and seemed local.
But maybe it’s simply that the food at Nénettes is really, really good.