Homerton restaurant Nest is upping sticks and moving to Shoreditch in October after outgrowing its current space. Nest, from the team behind the Michelin-starred St. Barts in Smithfield, opened in 2018, and focuses on serving a “sustainable, approachably priced tasting menu.” Founding trio Luke Wasserman, Toby Neill and Johnnie Crowe said Nest has “matured” since launching five years ago and will relocate to a “bigger, bolder space” at 374-378 Old Street, a double-fronted Victorian building by Shoreditch Town Hall.
But while the space will change, Nest as a concept will endure, and Crowe, executive chef, promised to continue to create menus emphasising vegetables, seafood, and one “hero” meat ingredient each season.
The restaurant has built a reputation for serving British produce from small-scale farmers and suppliers, including Alternative Meats, Keltic Seafare, Flying Fish, and Shrub Provisions. Wines are low intervention and cocktails, like the food, change as the year goes on.
At the new location, a dining room will be punctuated by a green, horseshoe-shaped bar in a room at the front of the building, with wooden benches, small tables, and jars of pickling produce on display.
Alongside cocktails and wines will be a “concise” collection of beers, ciders and perries to pair with small plates, including house bread with home churned butters, game bird terrine, and British cheese and oatcakes.
Upcoming at the new venue is also game season. Dishes will include seaweed and kale baked Rockefeller oysters, and Nest fried Partridge with XO sauce and dusted in chilli powder. Beef season will feature the likes of milk bread with beef fat butter and grated cured beef heart, and BBQ Welsh wagyu with bone marrow mayonnaise.
A new “one-region” wine pairing — showcasing lesser-known finds from the same territory — will also be available. The game menu will partner Austrian vintages, while the Loire Valley will be championed throughout the seafood season. A weekday lunch service will also begin.
Wasserman said: “We’ve loved every minute of our time on Morning Lane, but it’s time for us to move into a space that allows us to continue to push boundaries and improve the experience for our amazing guests and hard-working team.
“It has been an incredible year for us — thanks to the team’s hard work, we were awarded a Michelin star at Restaurant St. Barts less than six months after opening. Now, we are excited and focused on taking Nest to the next level.”
Nest & Nest Cellar, 374-378 Old Street, EC1V 9LT, nestfood.co.uk