This five-year-old “neighbourhood”
spot in West Hampstead is hailed by locals as a “real gem”
thanks to its “friendly” staff and its “interesting
modern European-ish food”.
Squaremeal 2007
Local foodies have long treasured Walnut,
a compact little venue on a busy corner in West Hampstead. Neighbourhood
restaurants are rarely as innovative as this place – the open
kitchen turns out potato & lovage timbales, crayfish risotto with
dill & lemon pesto & the much-loved aubergine & sorrel
sausages. If you’ve room for a pud, lime & passion fruit
soufflé should hit the spot. All this & friendly, if sometimes
rushed, service at gastropub prices.
Time Out Diary 2004
Main Courses £9.25 - £12.95
Credit DC, MC, V
Excellent Modern British Cuisine served
in a stylish but relaxed interior by outstandingly knowledgeable staff,
making this one of London's gems. The restaurant can also open at
other times, by arrangement.
Squaremeal 2004
Walnut has cracked this difficult corner
site in West Hampstead &, in so doing, has finally given the area
somewhere of gastronomic merit. The fact that it's owned by a husband
& wife team, Aiden & Jo Doyle, immediately inspires kind thoughts
&, though Aiden's menu might be a touch 'obvious', dishes taste
as good as they read & 'overall quality is good'. Start, perhaps,
with a smoked chicken terrine, pleasingly teamed with a sunny arrangement
of spinach, pine nuts & sun-dried tomatoes, ahead of something
from the grill (sea bass, tuna steak, rib-eye) or sausages - wild
boar & apple or aubergine & sorrel - & finish with a classic
pudding. The modern surroundings can get noisy but it's all good fun.
Mash and banger of a mousse - Matthew Lewin - Ham & High - 28
June 2002
This was a thrilling expedition - without
a guide - into the almost uncharted culinary wilderness of British
West Hampstead. We expected the privations experienced in Africa by
explorers John Speke and Richard Burton, or that poor Robert Burke
who started to death in the desert wastelands of Australia.
Instead, we discovered an oasis of rare quality and value.
Fed up of cooking in other people's kitchens, Chef Aidan Doyle and
his wife, Jo, opened their own restaurant in West End lane (opposite
the fire station) last September. And it seems to be working. We went
there on a typically chilly Tuesday night in June. The rain was bucketing
down, yet the place was nearly full.
It's stylish-looking, with intriguing but comfortable leather chairs,
a well-designed seating plan and an effective smoke-free area. The
open-plan kitchen is on a mezzanine level, so you can watch Mr Doyle
at work.
Starters included broccoli and stilton soufflé (which I would
have tried except I don't like broccoli) and a wonderfully creamy,
smoked halibut mousse with a herb salad and citrus dressing that stopped
my chief culinary adviser in her tracks.
Earlier she had grizzled constantly about being dragged off the beaten
track. Now she was smiling again.
I had a Mediterranean fish soup that was bold but not wildly successful.
It came nice and hot (you'd be amazed at how many plates of lukewarm
soup I have had placed before me), but too long on texture and too
short on flavour. It needed a lot of seasoning, and the accompanying
rouille could have had a lot more bite.
The main courses were both excellent. My adviser had fillet of lamb,
pan fried to pink perfection and then sliced onto the plate, served
with aubergine, garlic and coriander, which was tender and tasty:
altogether impressive.
She also swooned at the celeriac mousse, ordered as a vegetable side
order - a wondrously fluffy and light mixture whose appeal was enormously
augmented by the use of truffle oil. My chief culinary adviser has
a thing about truffles - she would probably leave me for a truffle
at the drop of a hat if one whistled at her.
I had a chargrilled tuna steak served with glass noodles, spring onions
and soya sauce. I asked for it to be cooked rare, and it came rare,
and yet it was still hot when it arrived. That shows a touch of class.
This was one of those places where even when we had finished eating,
we still took a keen interest in the dishes passing by on their way
to other tables. There were lots of things on the menu that I would
like to try - a seafood risotto, wild boar and apple sausages with
mash, to name but two - and other things that smelled wonderful as
they went by. We knew immediately that we would be returning to Walnut.
Also worth noting is that vegetarians are taken seriously here, and
not just offered one or two token dishes. All three veggie main course
sounded wonderful - roasted sweet pepper stuffed with shallots, mushrooms
and courgette; a lentil and vegetable herb crumble (with optional
cheese) and a walnut lasagne.
We didn't have any dessert, so the bill came to £19 each for
food, including service but not wine. I was pleased to see, incidentally,
that the wine list offered quite decent wines at about £11 to
£13 a bottle.
There is also a new lunch time menu (Tuesday to Saturday) with some
remarkable good value offers - such as half a kilo of mussels with
chips for a fiver, and a sirloin steak for £6.50. A traditional
lunch is served on Sundays.
When anyone would want to wait three months to get a table in the
West End, only to have indifferent food thrown at them, when they
could stay in the wilds of outer Hampstead and have excellent food
like this, is quite beyond me. Well, you may not see as many celebrities
at Walnut, but you will certainly see better food. Check out their
website at www.walnutwalnut.com.
Nuts about good food - NorthWest
Magazine - November 2001
Walnut has been open for just two months and occupies a spot that
has seen off a few other businesses in the last few years. But judging
how busy it was when we paid a mid-week visit, it seems that Walnut
is here to stay.
The modern looking restaurant feels intimate and comfortable, and
the staff are attentive but not overly so, allowing you to relax and
eat and drink at leisure. The menu, best described as modern European,
is largely seafood and vegetarian orientated but includes the usual
ribeye steak and the less usual wild boar and apple sausages for meat
lovers.
Eliminating originality, I joined my culinary companion in ordering
the seared scallops with baby spinach leaves and sesame oil dressing
to start - these appeared at the table in about three minutes flat
and were delectable: very soft and melting in the mouth.
For mains, we both chose seafood again - I had chargrilled tuna steak
with glass noodles, spring onions and soy sauce. The tuna came, as
I'd hoped, slightly pink in the middle but nice and crisp on the outside.
It was full of flavour and the accompanying noodles went with it perfectly.
My companion opted for the seafood risotto with lemon balm and pesto.
I tried a small fork-full and was instantly impressed -often risotto
concentrates on getting the consistency correct and neglects flavour;
this one though, was of a perfect texture with the hint of lemon lifting
the flavour. Finishing these, we still had much gossiping to do, so
we decided to have desserts and forget about waistlines. I had the
raspberry cheesecake (very filling and fruity) and my partner had
the citrus crème brulee which needed a hammer and chisel to
get into it! By the time we polished off the last of our bottle of
Cabernet franc we realised that the restaurant was quite empty and
that we should reluctantly make our way home.
For two people expect to pay around £60 - which is extremely
reasonable for such a refreshing good quality service. I only wish
there were restaurants like Walnut in my neighbourhood…