Michael Nadra, Primrose Hill

Skip The Nonsense

And here I am all alone again. Solo dining. At a proper restaurant – Michael Nadra in Primrose Hill. Lord Brave-y Gravy eating by himself in a proper restaurant.

I possibly could have found someone to go for a roast with if I had tried hard enough, but I couldn’t be arsed – I’d had a pretty unsuccessful few days, from a very average lunch the day before, to being charged £12 for a pint of beer, to missing tube trains by seconds and having to wait 15 minutes, plus all kinds of garbage tube delays on tubes full of Harry Styles fans, whatever a Harry Style is.

Oh and I had to eat the glitter gravy that my sister bought me for Christmas so I could say that I’d eaten it. Saltastic. Didn’t even get a glittery turd out of it.

And then I’d lost close to a month’s salary after tax on the stock market during the week, which is actually quite a bit of money, so I concluded it probably wasn’t best to inflict myself on others.

On the plus side, I lost the most money on oil stocks because the oil price went down, so you’ll all soon get cheaper petrol. Any minute now. Well, probably today. Or maybe tomorrow. Soon. Soonish.

Yep, another week, another load of money down the drain – and that’s before I even start thinking about a roast dinner. Still at least I don’t own shares in ASOS who were down another 30% at one point last week – now 83% down in a year. I really cannot fathom why ASOS isn’t doing well…

Absolutely mystifying.

If you think any of that is a worthy investment then I’ve got some alt-coins that might interest you.

De nada

Ohhhhhhhhhh if there is one silver lining to last week it was Bitcoin and the like also crashing – finally it is getting close to the point where I don’t look so stupid for saying Bitcoin was over-valued at £8,000 a couple of years ago.

Finally I can shout TULIPS and I might actually be right…soon. I may well be poorer after the last week, but I’m also closer to being right. What is more important in life? “Look, please understand, I know I cannot afford to pay my crystal meth debt this month, but what I can tell you was that I was right about crypto being a ponzi scheme”.

Michael Nadra is not somewhere where the staff will be wearing pink, fake leather boots – not even the men. Staff were all smartly dressed, many in trouser suits. Pretty sure I was the only person inside wearing shorts. I didn’t at all feel out of place with my slight scruffiness, solo dining in Primrose Hill. Not that I really give much of a fuck nowadays.

They did at least know to sit their solo diner in a corner – it is appreciated. Possibly the darkest corner I will ever sit in until Boris Johnson takes this country into full gulag status roughly a year or so after the next general election is held…or was due to be held. All hail future King Boris. If my future lawyer is reading, I just would like to clarify that even in 2022, we all wanted King Boris to rule forever – despite those newspaper stories which were nearly published about corruption.

Oh and the corner had no wi-fi. Corner of the restaurant, that is. Kind of similar to my soul really – dark with no connectivity.

I know, £2.50 for extra gravy. Yes, I did order extra gravy – I don’t know whether I’m more bothered about the £2.50 charge for extra gravy or losing nearly a month’s salary on the stock market last week. Well, if you take the last two weeks then around 6 week’s salary. Yeah, probably the £2.50 for gravy. At least the stock market will go back up again. Right?

Also on the menu was…hang on…£2.50 for a Yorkshire pudding? £5.00 for extra roast potatoes? Is that like 3 extra?

De Naga

So also on the menu were the actual roast dinners. The website suggested that they had rib-eye of beef, which I love, alas reality on the day was sirloin of beef. The website also suggested a price of £24.00 and reality was £25.00, but don’t worry, inflation is transitory. Plus people are protesting against inflation so that’ll make it go down.

I ordered the chicken, by the way.

What, you cannot see it?

Fine. Yes, I’ve discovered the photo editing functions on my telephone! Still didn’t manage to take a portrait photograph for the Grim or a video, but I’ll start remembering by the time there is a new, more popular social media app than Instagrim.

The roasted carrot was good – the flavour fully brought out, quite soft and nothing else to say.

There is little different to say about the parsnip, softly roasted once more with the flavour having a fair punch. A good start.

The green medley was a bit whatever, the green beans and tenderstem broccoli both had a slight crunch to them – arguably they were a tad bland but they were absolutely fine. Just the tiniest scrap of kale so I’m even less able than normal to be descriptive. Just think, if Donald Trump was still in power, Bitcoin would easily be $100,000 by now. HODL!

De nadadadadada I fucking hate having to think of headings to separate the content to make my SEO plugin happy.

Guess what? I liked the roast potatoes. They did have a slight feel of cooked earlier and were exceptionally hot on arrival…hmmm. However, soft inside with properly crispy outsides – this is pretty much how roast potatoes should be. Wowsers.

You can feel the but, can’t you? But it isn’t for the Yorkshire pudding because this was also excellent. A properly eggy bottom that lapped up the gravy, with nicely crispy outsides. Easily one of the best Yorkshires that I’ve had this year.

Is there a but? The chicken isn’t a but. Well, not really – the thigh was a little overcooked and shrivelled – roasted somewhat past its best, but the breast was plump and juicy, and pretty much spot on. It was larger than it looks in the photograph – large enough for me and I’m technically obese. Though I shaved my chest hair the other day so I’m slightly lighter now.

So, all good, right? Yeah, it’s the but. The gravy. Well, it’s gravy if you order extra for £2.50, but red wine jus that comes with the roast – at least according to the menu.

It was definitely a jus. It was sticky with a strong, rich red wine flavour to it. I guess I’m allowed to say this because it’s fine to write discriminating things about people that are wealthy, but maybe the folk of Primrose Hill and these types of areas like their Sunday roasts to come with a rich-tasting jus. Thankfully I corrected my spelling of “jus” there. That could have been a bit oops.

Anyway. I don’t. I want a proper gravy. For me, this red wine jus notably detracted from the rest of the roast dinner. For you, perhaps it will perfect it?

Michael Nadra is the restaurant I went to.

Interesting. If it wasn’t for the jus degrading my enjoyment than Michael Nadra’s roast dinner would have easily scored in the 8’s, probably mid 8’s – it is so rare to have both the roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding being excellent.

Had the carrot not been to my liking, then it wouldn’t degrade the score much. But the gravy, sorry, jus is everywhere. It is the soul of roast dinner.

I do think it’s more likely to be a horses for courses thing, but my rating remains my score – it is what I thought of the roast dinner, not what I think other people would rate it.

Apart from the jus, the only other thing that could be improved was the green beans/tenderstem/kale combo – Michael Nadra is clearly a very good restaurant, and I feel they could do something more interesting than just steam/boil some veg.

There were many positives – crispy roast potatoes, an excellently eggy Yorkshire pudding and plump, juicy chicken.

Service was very good to start – proper restaurant service, attentive and charming. But once I’d eaten there was nobody to be seen – well, the head waiter (manager?) was almost literally running between rooms, but I had to get up out of my seat to find someone to get the bill, after waiting 15 minutes or so in hope of catching someone’s attention.

I’m scoring it a 7.74 out of 10. Had the jus been some watery tasteless nonsense, then it would have scored in the low 8’s – good gravy (to my personal tastes) and it would easily have been mid 8’s. My accomplice…oh…I didn’t have one.

Oh I nearly forgot…WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? Did they buy their wine glasses from ASOS?

There’s no plan for next Sunday. Well, I don’t have any plans for any Sunday whatsoever coming up, however I am intending on being up north with the folks next weekend, RMT and ASLEF depending – apparently Hull Trains aren’t actually on strike. So we shall see – I either get to see my mum and dad, or you get another roast dinner review. Win, win, chicken dinner…depending on the jus.

Yeah this is an actual van that I photographed on the way home. If you can’t believe investment advice from JG Pest Control, who can you believe investment advice from?