Little Cellars x Lucy Timm, 75 Camberwell Church St, London SE5 8TU

Little Cellars x Lucy Timm: Elbows off the table, Peasantcore and Dadcore — make room for Wealthy Auntcore

Apologies for the radio silence, The Editor and I only went and got hitched, didn’t we? Anyway —

Owners of both Peckham Cellars and Little Cellars, Helen Hall, Ben McVeighand Luke West-Whylie have a knack for finding culinary talent. It began with the robust cookery of Henry Freestone at Peckham Cellars — the kind of guy who you can trust with your life to cure any hangover or breakup, followed by Pablo Urain Alfonso, who brought beams of San Sebastián with him at a time when London only flickered with it. I’d sit at the counter surveying Pablo in how cats chase light reflected from a watch; utterly unflappable, running a service by himself sometimes, to no detriment of the diners.

Eventually, the sister restaurant, Little Cellars opened — its matchbox of a kitchen demanding a similar breed of chef with a Liam Neeson-like approach to prep. To this end, they found Ollie Lawrance; a sweetly humble man whose beguiling temperament belies his ability to deliver dishes that carry brass knuckles in one hand and a velour pillow in the other.

Rather unfairly, this review isn’t about Ollie but his holiday replacement, Lucy Timm, (ex-Sager + Wilde, Leroy, Royale to name a few) who’s headlining a series of pop-ups across London. So why have I even bothered? Because the menu is a litany of lip-biters. Heirloom tomatoes with chickpeas, za’atar and basil. White crab, apricot harissa, creme fraiche and chive tartlets. Kofte. Mango-chilli mille-feuille. We also happen to be here on a Thursday, meaning everything bar one dish and the bread and butter, is £22 per person — take that, Small Plate Mafia©. Garnering a reputation for Provençale cooking with Italian and North African influences and funnelled through the limitations of a dinky kitchen, Timm deploys a practical menu that still allows some impressive range of motion in its flex.

The last time I had Panisse was at Sessions Art Club; two flops of underseasoned impotence at £5 a pop, whereas Timm’s would give them performance anxiety. Rigidly crisp, they give way to seasoned silk, all neatly piped with a lacing of muhammara and topped with twisted slivers of pickled fennel and fresh dill fronds. Crammed into the shatter of a wonton case, the white crab is bound with creme fraiche wherein apricot harissa gently lurks, topped with chives and Aleppo pepper. They’re the kind of bites you hover around a canapé table for, spreading disinformation to others to ensure you eat most of them.

Ruffles of San Daniele prosciutto accompany pickles made with smoked salt, for that ‘cock your head to one side’ moment that’s a proper Goldilocks touch. The bread and butter appear to be the standard issue of Little Cellars, but recently outraged by an image of Planque’s piss-take, I’m forced to include it.

Slips of celery and peach thoroughly drifted with cured ricotta and studded with smoked almonds make for the stand-out dish. Hawk-eyed observation of balance, it beams with the sort of sun that grew Timm’s influences. It’s a similar story, on paper at least, for the heirloom tomatoes with crispy chickpeas, a tangled shock of pickled red onion all freckled with za’atar and lashings of olive oil. Yet despite appearing as Natoora’s top-shelf ‘maters, they’re gushings of nothingness. But you can’t hold this against Timm because broadly speaking, good tomatoes are quite literally a foreign concept in the UK.

Door wedges of aubergine rolled in semolina and deep-fried are piled on a slick of whipped feta, blotted with sour cherry molasses, whilst a loosely hewn lamb kofte sits in a generous splodge of matbucha, mint sauce and tumbled with pine nuts which, unfortunately, is a flatbread short of the party it deserves.

“It’s like a Solero amongst a croissant,” says The Editor. Listen, I know. But look, I’m telling you; she outright refuses to be a writer, so you’re stuck with me, dear reader. Anyway, she’s bang-on. This mango-chilli mille-feuille is exactly that; finished with Aleppo pepper and gleaming with a mango gel, snaked over cream. The smoulder of chilli I’d hoped for doesn’t materialise but it’s understandable — the last thing you want is a load of diners flailing about because they’re eating something hotter than mayonnaise.

We’re in an age of ‘cores’; the middle-class fetish for the working class spawning Peasantcore, to the familiarity of French bistros to those in their autumn years creating ‘Dadcore’ as coined by Marina O’Loughlin. Having no doubt cut her cloth accordingly in terms of kitchen limitations, Timm’s menu is just what you might expect an exuberant, vivacious Aunt to belt-feed guests at a sun-dappled garden party in the South of France, sloshing out Crémant and cackling about how she made a fortune flogging her PR firm in the 90s. Her accumulated skillsets now deployed at fruit and veg markets, butchers and fishmongers, laying on spreads that make the estranged members of the family want to pick up the phone. Let us usher in the era of ‘Wealthy Auntcore’.

That said, there is some heartbreak in this meal. Timm’s doing her level best to take us to a sun-dappled soirée, but despite all efforts is ultimately kneecapped by who I suspect to be, Natoora; the keeper of beefhearts, destroyer of worlds. Regardless, I’m set on grabbing a table at her own bricks and mortar, which I’ve no doubt is but an investor away. Don’t believe me? Just look at Timm’s Instagram grid; natural light and iPhone camera quality notwithstanding, it’s an absolute talent show of yet more lip-biters. Natoora be damned.