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Wine List Confidential: Nest Farmhouse

16 September 2024 By Douglas Blyde

Douglas Blyde explores the new Norfolk outpost of the team behind one of East London’s trendiest restaurants, and examines whether this fledgling concept might become a “coveted culinary destination”.

Square Meal noted that the trio’s first venture, Nest, “originally debuted in Hackney in 2018” before it quickly migrated to the trendier shores of Shoreditch. The culinary trio – Toby Neill, Johnnie Crowe, and Luke Wasserman – didn’t stop there. They spread their wings to Farringdon, where Restaurant St. Barts now proudly flaunts a green Michelin star alongside Apricity, Petersham Nurseries, and Silo. Their journey continued with a pop-up at Burnham Overy Boathouse in Norfolk in 2022, followed by a return residency the next year. Now, as Square Meal puts it, “they have put down roots” with Nest Farmhouse.

Design

Nest Farmhouse’s press materials boast of its lofty location at the highest point in the lowlands of North Norfolk, evoking memories of the Charlie Wells TV advert for Eagle Bitter, sponsor of the East Anglia Downhill Skiing Championship. Nestled on a sprawling 1,000-acre farmstead northeast of King’s Lynn and near the cinematic Holkham beach, famously featured at the end of Shakespeare In Love, this venue offers a blend of dried flower-adorned rustic charm and refined design.

Housed in a former cattle shed, now spruced up in sage by Swedish designer and stylist, Lulu Carter, the open kitchen anchors one end of a rectangular room which feels like Noma’s cousin who’s decided to settle in the countryside. At the opposite end, a pastoral lounge beckons with its fireplace, board games, and cheeky pinup playing cards. Between these, a long bar counter with Wherry on draft dares you to linger.

Nest Farmhouse also offers five bedrooms above, from the double-aspect Elder, complete with a veranda offering sweeping views and a mysteriously visible yet inaccessible mezzanine with distant, untouchable lightswitches, to Pine downstairs. It’s the kind of place which might just tempt you – as it has several members of the Nest Farmhouse team – to consider a permanent escape to the countryside.

A short stroll across an undulating, Teletubbies-like lawn leads you to a reeded pond, where you can sip on a violet-scented, Sacred vermouth spiced, new barrel-aged Negroni in the company of the resident duck, Donald. Plans are also afoot for an on-site delicatessen and bakery, along with an additional suite of four bedrooms, and walking trails should you feel the need to leave.

Drinks

Drinks at Nest Farmhouse, as with the entire Nest collection, are overseen by Luke Wasserman, who began his career not in hospitality but as a runner on music promos for the likes of Tom Jones and Girls Aloud. After a stint in project management at an advertising agency, he co-founded Nest in Hackney in 2017.

Just two miles north, as the crow flies, farmer-turned-vigneron, Robert Perowne crafts the house sparkler from Cobble Hill (£11/125ml), a lithe, plush delight offered to guests upon arrival. This pinkish fizz kicks off a concise but globally ambitious list of 60 bins. Wasserman’s selection may have its quirks, with seemingly arbitrary mark-ups, but it roams the globe, making stops in Australia, Sussex, Austria, Essex, France, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Monmouthshire, Portugal, and Spain.

Bottles start as low as £33 for Mandarossa’s frais du bois and morello-scented Frappato from Sicily, reaching up to £249 for the 2006 Grand Vin from Château Montrose – priced at roughly double retail. The sweet spot lies around the £70 mark, where you’ll find the three-and-a-half-times-marked-up Mount Pleasant Elizabeth Hunter Valley Semillon 2017 (£70), Danbury Ridge Octagon Block Chardonnay 2020 from Essex (£74), and Joh. Jos. Prüm Bernkasteler Riesling Kabinett (£79) at triple its shop price. For those willing to venture beyond £100, there’s Chateau Musar 2017 (£110), 2018 Luddite Shiraz (£118), and a well-aged Bordeaux, Potensac 2008 (£120). A trio of orange wines, including Albillo Lovamor (£68), offers an intriguing diversion and match the hue of expansive sunsets in these parts.

The inclusion of a Provence rosé might seem predictable, almost as if Wasserman is hedging his bets. However, he redeems himself by opting for a craft Prosecco over a big brand – a nod to the notion that sometimes the best wines are those which speak for themselves, without the need for a marketing crutch. It would also be a considerate touch to name the purveyors of the Ports and Jurançon listed under the sweet/fortified section, giving credit where it’s due.

Dishes

The currently compact kitchen is under the watchful eye of executive chef, Johnnie Crowe, whom we met during our visit, and Norfolk-born head chef, Grant Cotton. Cotton honed his skills at Gladwin Brothers, The Harwood Arms, and Harlequin – later rebranded as the group’s Fenn (RIP) – before taking the helm of the pre-Nest Farmhouse pop-up. Drinks today were selected by Tara Finney, who, like Wasserman, comes from an artistic background, having transitioned from film and theatre production to operations manager for the Nest collection.

Dinner began with outstanding and distinctive stout-enriched soda bread boasting a cake-like crumb, served with house-made butter. This was followed by crab from the accurately named Wells-next-the-Sea, accompanied by barbecued green beans, fleshy nectarines, and elderflower pickle, accented by lovage. The cohesive, vibrant dish, arranged on a Willow pattern plate and approached with an Edwardian white bone fish knife, was complemented by Fattoria di Vaira’s Vincenzo, a polite Adriatic orange Falanghina/Fiano served in what appeared to be a Riedel beer glass, mirroring the shade of the nectarine.

Next came a plump lobster tail, bathed in a lightly curried, saffron-scented lobster sauce, accompanied by an excellent, properly crisp fennel bhaji, Saxmundham cucumber relish, and genuinely hot padrón peppers – surprisingly grown in the UK. This dish was perfectly matched with a fully ripened Monmouthshire Pinot Noir from the warm 2020 vintage (Ancre Hill). Like the wine, a side of frilly lettuce leaves, was biodynamically grown, here by Lucy Birnie at the idyllic-looking West Lexham holistic retreat, whom the chefs, we’re told, keep on WhatsApp speed dial.

To finish, we indulged in fluffy doughnuts dipped in homemade strawberry jam and a peanut butter custard. Finney’s best vinous match of the evening was the slightly chilled Sicilian Frappato, delivering a burst of freshness while mirroring the jam’s complimentary strawberry perfume.

Last word

We predict that Nest Farmhouse is poised for an exciting evolution, with plans granted for a larger kitchen promising to unlock a more kaleidoscopic menu. However, the venue must first navigate certain tensions which go beyond the juxtaposition of Scandi glass minimalism, country herringbone pelmets, and nighttime grunge soundtrack. If it can resist the temptation to overly pander to local palates, Nest Farmhouse has the potential to embrace a bolder, more audacious spirit, drawing the attention of global gastronomes, much like the renowned Ynyshir, or the now-legendary Fäviken (RIP).

As the wine list grows, potentially enriched with a black book of desirable single bottles, there’s a need to simultaneously address a more thoughtful approach to wine storage and display – currently, reds are perched on high shelves in a room which tends to run warm, which could compromise their integrity. Yet, in its first summer, we’ve already glimpsed the birth of something potentially extraordinary – a venue poised to become a coveted culinary destination. Let’s see how things hatch.