Sitwell stirs it up

William has Mexican in a former police station

Side Hustle

Nomad London 28 Bow Street London WC2E 7AW 020-3906 1600 thenomadhotel.com

Star rating

★★★★★

Lunch for two

£103 excluding drinks and service

Booking restaurants has become a nightmarish scenario, like those crazy dreams where one is trying to catch a train but is stymied at every turn. You can’t seem to leave the house, and if you do and manage to get into a car, every road is blocked, your two-and-a-half year-old child is at the wheel, you’ve no idea which station you are trying to get to, your car has no sides, no engine, then there is no train station after all but the Queen has arrived to say hello which is nice, but very awkward, because you realise you have no clothes on.

So here I am trying to book tables in restaurants and I can’t call to check opening times as websites insist you use the reservation system, and then I can’t get a lunch booking as they’re only doing evenings, I can’t get an evening table as they’re not open ’til Thursday and I can’t do Thursday evening so I try another place and I want the interesting new menu, but that menu is only offered on weekend nights, but I don’t want the snack bar offer and here I am sweating at the keyboard, the doorbell goes and it’s the Queen again and I’ve got no clothes on.

Which is why I’m dining at a Mexican restaurant at a new hotel in Covent Garden (once a magistrates’ court and police station), where the loos in the basement feel like cells and where I actually wanted to dine at the main restaurant but it only opens on a day of the week I’m not there and once again I seem to have lost my clothes…

The hotel is an impressive, stylish place called Nomad (yes, annoyingly spelled like that) whose sister of the same name is a well-known New York establishment. And, get this description (written by them) of where I’m eating, the bar and Mexican gaff: ‘Side Hustle is Nomad’s take on the classic British pub seen through a Nomad lens with a few surprises.’ Honestly, I’m back in the nightmare trying to find a ‘classic British pub’, except this place is all wooden booths, with greeny-gold thick leather-cushioned seats, spherical golden lamps hanging from brushed-bronze chains, sparkling gold and bronze screens and a shiny bronze ceiling, and classic British grub that is in fact Mexican!

In the fog of lunacy, perhaps I imagined I’d ordered a pint of ale and some pork scratchings, but what arrives first are impeccable Camparis and guacamole with tortilla chips. In, possibly, a nod to the classic British pub there are peas on and in the guacamole. Perhaps the spectre of a ghost could emerge from this here police station and arrest the chef for crimes against the culinary arts. Peas and avos don’t deserve each other and I don’t deserve the result.

Then comes the ‘black truffle tlayuda’, a vast, slightly flabby tortilla covered in shaved truffle and Parmesan with corn somewhere underneath (I do wish Covid had at least killed off the concept of sharing plates), and a fine plate of pork belly, all soft flesh and crisp fat. Not especially Mexican, granted, but there was a dollop of green stuff on the side, a salsa of avocado and tomatillos, Mexico’s green unripe tomatoes.

There are a bunch of other heaving mounds on tortillas, among which I could pick out crisp kale, a decent soft prawn in batter, and some tasty aubergine. I rescued them as they drowned in onions and pickled cabbage and mayo and thick black garlic and salsa and shredded mozzarella. We also unwrapped a neat, green-leaf parcel of slow-cooked lamb barbacoa: a ‘para todos’ to share once more. It was gloopy food for the toothless.

Then I made my escape, yearning for clean and simple reality.