Nina

If Nina were a person, she’d be your fabulous yet slightly eccentric auntie. 

The one who winks as she says “be good,” calls everyone darling, insists on laying the table for breakfast like it’s dinner at Claridge’s, wears leopard print to do the dishes, and spends most summers flitting around the Amalfi Coast in a kaftan and a cloud of Tom Ford.

Nina – the restaurant – has that same irreverent glamour. It’s from the same group behind the Greek-inspired duo Bottarga and Zephyr, which have helped to boost the already booming number of great restaurants in Notting Hill, and who who seem to be collecting West London hotspots like they’re building a Monopoly board. 

There’s something knowingly cool about Nina. For a start, you’ll find it behind a nondescript door – just off Marylebone High Street in what used to be the Peruvian restaurant, Pachamama – which leads you downstairs to a chic, concrete-walled dining room. Inside, it’s all curvy chrome furniture, white table cloths, candles and leopard-print accents. There’s also an impressive light fitting above the large, mirror-topped table that looks like crystallised jellyfish and on the walls are hand-drawn notes as artworks. The whole vibe is polished but kitsch. 

This sense of glamour and fun plays into the Mediterranean-leaning menu. From the smaller dishes, there’s cured wagyu and tomato-studded house focaccia to snack on, bluefin tuna e melone with Italian ponzu and basil and generous salads served in crystal-cut bowls. The structure loosely follows antipasti, primi and secondi but the dishes come out as and when they’re ready. Just like being at your aunt’s house, there’s no hard and fast rules but after a ‘tini’ or two it’s hard not to kick back and go with the flow.

The pasta dishes come generously portioned and generously sauced. There’s spaghetti with Nina’s tomato sauce (with supplementary stracciatella), cacio e pepi rigatoni with a confit egg yolk and giant tubes of paccheri with duck ragu bianco and sage. From the larger, secondi-style dishes, the grilled prawns with chilli, herb and lemon butter and the behemoth-sized chicken Milanese with parmesan butter are guaranteed hits, particularly if you order the skinny fries on the side.

If, after all of this, you have space for dessert, there’s a lemon meringue semi-freddo served inside a whole lemon and a dark chocolate sorbet with a generous sprinkling of flaky Maldon salt. 

Nina is a good time. Take a date, a mate, or your mildly chaotic aunt. She’ll probably love it.