Have you ever wondered just how much pasta your favourite Italian restaurant serves in a day? According to the owner of Bermondsey’s Flour & Grape, it’s about 24 kilograms of the fresh stuff in a 24-hour window – with pasta production starting at 9am, and it doesn’t stop as day turns to night.
Nick Crispini is half Italian – he grew up in Guernsey with his English mother and Italian father. He tells The Biscuit, “My parents had restaurants on the island, so I was brought up in the industry, but as a stubborn teenager I didn’t want to follow in their footsteps.”
After moving to the SE1 area in 2004, Nick “quickly fell in love with it”. It wasn’t until a few years later – grown up and rid of the strong will set by his teenage self about going into the restaurant business – that he realised he wanted to open his own establishment. But he did know it was always going to be in Bermondsey.
“After going to art college, I went into IT programming, online games and web development,” Nick explains, “I always loved good food and in my late twenties I couldn’t fight it anymore and accepted hospitality was in the blood, so embarked on the idea of opening my own place, in the location that I loved. I sacrificed my successful IT career to go to catering college and trained as a professional chef. From there, I worked at various places but, most notably, Theo Randall at the InterContinental, from whom I learned so much.”
He couldn’t deny his love of food: “I live to eat, something simple but delicious is so satisfying and I love seeing others, whether it be family, friends or customers, feeling that same sense of satisfaction and joy from a simple but delicious plate of food – it’s incredibly fulfilling.”
Initially, however, Nick opened Antico in 2012, a neighbourhood Italian restaurant on the same site as Flour & Grape sits now. He says: “It was very obvious from the start that our pasta was a firm favourite, so I began to develop the concept of a quick-serve, yet high-quality pasta and wine restaurant, which I planned for a second site in 2016. Unfortunately, after the referendum result, I immediately saw rising costs across the board and, with Antico’s modest profits, I knew I had to change to the new concept at just one site.”
It was then that the idea of quality quick-serve pasta was boiled up, and served with a fresh sprinkling of parmesan: introducing Flour & Grape. But why the name? “Simple, pasta and wine – the perfect Italian duo,” answers Nick.
Nick chose Bermondsey as the home for Flour & Grape because of his growing love for the neighbourhood: “I fell in love with the area, its location, vibe, and I saw its potential. This place has grown so much since I move here in 2004 and I’m so proud to be a part of it.”
Not forgetting the fact that it’s “just a few minutes from London Bridge”, but at the same time, Nick continues, “you can walk down the street and get a local feeling with lots of independent shops and restaurants. It’s quite special”.
The average day at Flour & Grape is “busy from start to finish”. Nick explains how, for a small restaurant, they serve an average of 2,200 customers per week. The pasta making starts at 9am and a chef will be rolling out more fresh pasta – from ravioli to pappardelle and linguine – pretty much all day, and often into the evening. “You can even watch our chefs rolling it in our huge window on Bermondsey Street,” says Nick. So, be sure to have a glance through the pane on your next visit.
The Flour & Grape menu serves small plates, recommending two to three dishes per guest. It’s a tidy menu, well thought-out and bursting with flavour. Featuring a roasted pork shoulder and sage butter tortelloni, spinach, mascarpone and nutmeg fazzoletti, and preserved truffle, butter emulsion and parmesan taglierini, to name a few of their pasta plates.
But what is owner Nick’s favourite dish? “After being sent to Italy one summer, to stay with relatives when I was young, I fell in love with tomatoes. Ever since then a simple but amazingly flavourful tomato pasta is always a go-to, so our casarecce arrabiata on the menu is definitely my favourite, a true tomato bomb.”
The Biscuit asked Nick for an insider tip on how to make a great pasta sauce – what are the secrets, straight from an expert. He says: “Don’t have too many key favours in the sauce (ideally, you should have one or two), otherwise, it overcomplicates what is a simple dish.” And remember to “treat the ingredients with respect”. When cooking, Nick’s top tip is to “only lightly season the sauce but heavily season your pasta water!”
You can’t book a table at Flour & Grape, they use a queue system, but just downstairs, tucked away in the basement of the restaurant, is cocktail bar Two One Four. An intimate affair, it’s a perfect spot for a post-pasta tipple, or, as they recommend, a drink while you wait for your table. What is Nick’s drink of choice? He recommends a Jensen’s Gin and Bermondsey Tonic Water, telling us how it’s “a tonic we developed for the bar, super tasty and as local as you can get”. He adds that for “post-dinner, my bar manager Amelie has recently developed a Cognac and biscuit flavoured espresso martini for our upcoming winter menu, it takes the original to another level”.
Neighbouring Flour & Grape are some of Nick’s local favourites. We know that the Bermondsey community is tight-knit, but what are his recommendations? “I have so many! As I love food, I love to visit other local restaurants, after all, I live here, too, not just work here. We love to pop into Hakata for a bowl of tasty ramen – I can recommend the spicy miso. And also, Café Amisha for pizza – I love pizza, just not quite as much as pasta! And you can’t go wrong with a few tapas and a glass of Garnacha on a warm summer’s night at José.”
Flour & Grape seems to be thriving, as life begins to resemble some sort of normality, but what were Nick’s key learnings from running a restaurant through tough times? He learned that “trying to change a restaurant business into something that it doesn’t already do doesn’t work. Be patient, people are people and social beings, and they will return – but that’s easier to say in hindsight and with lovely loyal customers”.
Whether you’re looking for a creamy burrata drizzled in olive oil, several plates of freshly prepared pasta, or a limoncello digestive, Flour & Grape appears to have it all.
Asking Nick what he is most excited for in the coming year, looking at what 2023 might have in store, he says, “I have plans for another venture but not necessarily another Flour & Grape, watch this space!” If it provides half of the taste and experience of Nick’s SE1 restaurant, then we’re sure we’ll be first in the queue.
And what about Flour & Grape? Nick just wants to “continue to strive for constant delicious food and wine for our customers, and at great value”.
Visit Flour & Grape at 214 Bermondsey St, SE1 3TQ. Phone: 020 7407 4682 https://www.flourandgrape.com
