Nico steaks new claim on city’s diners
Renowned chef comes up with another genius idea
Nico Simeone is a perfectly good chef but a brilliant entrepreneur. Plenty of people can make a good sauce. Not many can persuade customers to eat what he wants them to eat, and return every six weeks to do it all again.
That’s what he pulled off with Six by Nico, his high-concept tasting menu restaurant that started in Finnieston and has now spread to London, Manchester, Belfast and beyond.
From a business point of view, it’s brilliant. He knows exactly how many customers he will have each week – everyone books, no one pops out for six circus-themed courses because they can’t be bothered boiling pasta. And he knows what they are having as it’s a set menu.
Not for him the problems of surplus turbot or unordered oysters. He can run a virtually waste-free operation, with a minimum spend of £32 per customer.
However there is one drawback – Glasgow is getting Nicoverloaded. There are two branches of the OG, plus Beat 6 in Dennistoun doing something similar but giving the profits to a cancer charity. Then there’s 111 by Modou,
Nico’s first restaurant, which he passed on to his trainee.
Nico is smart enough to sense when a market is approaching saturation. His response, however, is to take his beloved set menu and twist it into another potentially lucrative format. The result is Chateau-X, his 21st century steakhouse.
Here there are no leftover sirloins to trouble Nico’s bottom line. Instead, everyone has chateaubriand, £30 for two, then picks from a short selection of sides. No starters – you can pick at olives or bread and butter if you are desperate. Dessert, a nostalgic waffle cone of ice-cream with raspberry, is on the house. The idea is genius but how was the dinner?
The venue, a Tardis at the eastern end of the Finnieston strip, used to be Nonya. The bamboo light fittings have been replaced with chandeliers. The raw stone walls are chic but chilly – seated in a window nook, I had to put my scarf back on.
With the chateaubriand a given,
we would have been quicker to tell the bouncy waiter what we were not having. The marrowbone was tempting but when there’s 500g of prime beef at the centre of the table, adding more seemed gratuitous. We also passed on the broccoli and weren’t feeling the caesar salad.
The rest of the sides? Bring them on. The meaty salsa, bearnaise and peppercorn sauces are for another day – we had our marrowbone in the form of a sticky jus. It went very well with the steak, which arrived cut into oozy pink chunks for ease of sharing.
Carb Boy, who would have preferred it with another couple of minutes on the grill, had the end pieces while I had the rarer centre. This is one of the few problems I could see with this business model. What happens if someone likes their meat blue while their other half prefers it cooked to the texture of a beer mat?
That potential marriage-wrecker aside, the sharing concept worked very well. It’s cosy and intimate, like having a luxe dinner at home but without anyone on pan duty.
The side dishes also elevated the steak which, while enjoyable, is rarely my first choice at a restaurant. Carrots – again, not a vegetable I often order – were cooked in beef fat. The edges were toasty, the roots cooked until tender but not collapsing. Best of all was a leafy topping made from the carrots’ fronds and blobs of deep green tarragon pesto. I loved these and guarded them on my side of the table.
Carb Boy preferred the chips, made from red-skinned rooster potatoes and fried in more luscious dripping.
We were both keen on the frankly naughty mac and cheese croquettes. I’m not usually wild about this homely pleasure being repositioned as an upmarket accompaniment but these were giant cubes of melting pleasure.
A deeply charred hispi cabbage half, extravagantly loaded with grated ewe’s cheese, was also very pleasing. The cabbage, already melting from the heat of the griddle, collapsed under the weight of the dry, tangy cheese. Add in the blood-soaked meat and the dense flavours of the marrowbone jus and you have a very happy mouthful.
The ice-cream, while in no way essential, was a sweet touch.
So Nico has done it again, got me eating exactly what he wants. It was a good dinner. I liked the way the set main course put the spotlight on the veggies and extra bits. The kitchen, once it has the meat off pat, has time and energy to make these sing.
But what I admired most about the whole experience was Nico’s business acumen. Or as we call it in Glasgow, his brass neck.