The large, flavourful Kurdish plates at Nandine tell a much fuller story of Kurdistan than those in the west typically encounter. Talk of Kurdistan – the Middle Eastern region that encompasses parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Armenia and Iran – usually brings to mind a limited narrative derived from headlines of ethno-political conflict, violent struggles for independence and the generally bleak epilogue of colonisation.
Nandine does not exist in the abstract; its impressive origin story begins with its admirable matriarch/head chef, Pary Baban, fleeing her northern Iraqi hometown of Qaladze in the late 1980s while she was still a teenager living under Saddam Hussein’s regime. On her journey from Qaladze to south London, Baban learned of the differences between various kinds of Kurdish cooking before eventually starting Nandine – a refined take on what she jotted down in a notebook over the years.
