Review: Nanban, at home

I love the menu at Nanban. It says something very true to my heart: that there is no “right and wrong” in cuisine, there is just stuff that works. And when stuff doesn’t work, it’s not usually because there’s something inherently wrong with the combination; it’s just been done poorly. So Nanban is quite clearly a Japanese noodle restaurant. Except with curried goat. And jackfruit. And basically all the Afro/Asian influences you might expect from a place that grew up in multi-cultural Brixton.

My ramen was “the leopard” with some fatty slices of pork, an excellent sesame broth with plenty of depth to the flavour, some maliciously fiery strips of bamboo shoot marinades in scotch bonnet chilli, and an absolutely brilliant tea egg. I’m not enough of an expert to recognise the actual tea, but the smokey flavour came through clear as day. Gotta acknowledge that the noodles were softer than I’d like, but that’t the kind of detail you can’t really hope for when a dish has been Deliveroo’d to your door.

Maureen went with the curried goat noodles. This was a dry dish. The goat was beautifully flavour-packed and rich, lots of goatiness and chilli heat. I feel it necessary to report that an entire main dish of this did actually become a bit overwhelming eventually, especially with no broth. But it was veryvery good indeed.

We had a couple of sides. The nasu dengaku (half an aubergine slow-roasted with a miso glaze) was perfectly good, though I’ll admit to having had better; they just want to be more generous with the sticky-sweet glaze I reckon. The jackfruit nuggets were delicious, dipped in the peppy mayo-based sauce they came with.

We’re going to be getting more takeaways from Nanban, for certain. And getting through the door as soon as they’re open for sit-in again (I’m keen to find out how they prefer their noodles to come out). Top drawer.