The Guardian
Grace Dent enjoyed one of her best meals of the year at an “utterly classy” take on Caribbean cuisine from Nathaniel Mortley, a chef who worked at Oblix and Jason Atherton’s City Social before serving time in nearby HMP Brixton, where he “asked himself some big questions about how he’d ended up locked in a cell”.
The restaurant “isn’t by any standards cheap”, with starters at about £12 and mains around the £30 mark, but Grace was mightily impressed by the attention to detail in a menu offering the likes of confit pork belly with scotch bonnet mayo, lobster rasta pasta and carrot and plantain bhajis.
Highlights included a plate of thin, crisp roti served with a highly addictive scotch bonnet butter dip – “one shouldn’t drink butter, but in this instance it’s excusable”; an ackee and saltfish spring roll; elegantly flavoured jerk chicken; and seared pimento duck breast served with confit duck leg croquette and pumpkin puree.
Grace Dent - 2025-11-16The Times
Jay Rayner appreciated a pair restaurants on either side of Brixton’s Brockwell Park, each with a compelling backstory. Both are advancing the conversation around Caribbean food, showing it can be more than basic take-away. And, he said, “they’re serving terrific food while doing so.”
Those backstories: NattyCanCook is the first restaurant from Nathaniel Mortley, of Guyanese and German-Jewish heritage, whose career as a chef was interrupted by a two-year jail sentence for dealing drugs. RapChar is from Raymond Fowler, who grew up in a Jamaican orphanage.
Both chefs “can indeed cook”, Jay reports, with the high-end-trained Natty’s cuisine sounding the more refined while Raymond’s is notably generous. Where their menus intersect, with jerk chicken, Jay reckoned that RapChar edges ahead by using “a bone-heavy cut that can take more of a spanking” (although Natty’s version comes accompanied by a “superb croquette of the leg, sultry with allspice”).
Jay Rayner - 2026-01-11
