Petersham Nurseries is best described as a restaurant with a garden centre attached. Any notion that the primary purpose of this location is to sell plants has edged further and further away from the truth over the years, to the point where maintaining the fiction is now almost impossible. And that is something that has sent certain local residents and planners into paroxysms of fury. It took 18 years for the owners to get formal planning permission to serve dinner in the evenings, which was finally granted last year.

And it is also the tale of two restaurants, as I found out on a trip last week.

Earlier in the year, we visited one evening for a special occasion meal, and while pictures were taken, jokes prepared and a review outlined, I never got the chance to commit it to “paper”, partly because I have been working ever since to pay for the meal. It was, in the main, excellent, but even for these parts, breathtakingly expensive, although almost worth it for a nettle risotto that was one the most unusual (and tasty) things I have ever had. £75 for a set three course meal is teetering on the edge of ludicrous, but these days, perhaps not entirely exceptional for high quality food: But the drinks were so expensive I actually phoned up and asked what their corkage charge was…

So when Mrs Nigel suggested a walk along the Thames to go to Petersham Nurseries for lunch, I was somewhat reluctant, as I just couldn’t face another double shift at Burger King to pay for it. But she is persuasive, and so we set off along the Thames and across Petersham Meadows to give it a try.

I am lucky enough to live right by one of the most beautiful riverside walks in Britain, but we don’t often veer off over Petersham Meadows, which is a little flat and boring, and occasionally home to a herd of killer cows. If you do venture across, at the end, you will find the entrance to the Nurseries, which nestles in an old brick courtyard. That is if you don’t get run over by a Range Rover or a Bentley as you walk down the road which doubles up as a car park.

Inside, there is the world’s most expensive gift shop, the restaurant, a “Teahouse”, and the odd plant and pot to justify the “Nurseries” moniker. Lunch is served in the Teahouse, which like the rest of the buildings is a repurposed glass house. And it is lovely inside, with appropriate tables and chairs, and some lovely flowers and plants. Hayfever sufferer? Take anti-histamine whichever time of year you come here.

We were seated pretty rapidly, and the menu appeared.

Amazingly, the food prices were only in double digits, and everything twenty quid or under. Was this a “small plates” special? Were they expecting us to order 2-3 dishes a person to get together enough for a meal each?

We bit the bullet, and ordered only two salads, the Asparagus and the Chickpea. Would £25 worth of food be enough? That is barely the price of 2 salads in Pret.

The sunglasses are included for scale :-) The portions were adequate, if not excessive, but enough for a “light” lunch.

Looking at this, you might think the beautifully presented (and anchovy heavy) Asparagus salad was the best. In fact, it was not. Somehow the elements didn’t gel, which left you with a lot of faintly isolated tastes, and it just didn’t feel like a dish, more a selection of ingredients. The Chickpea salad, on the other hand, really worked. Not only were the ingredients well chosen, but the tahini sauce really pulled it all together.

We stuck to water for drinks. We could have easily doubled the cost with 2 (tiny) glasses of wine, and the cost of two flat whites would have got you most of a salad. This seems really out of whack and is more in keeping with the posh restaurant vibes than a casual lunch. The shrinkflation of wine is one of COVID’s most insidious legacies.

I was very pleased that I had been dragged across the killer cow field field to lunch, as the location is beautiful, it’s not too far off the Thames Path if you are walking along it, and is significantly better than the majority of lunch offerings in Richmond itself. There are a few other places worth going to (Tide Tables is pretty good, Steins is great if you like a big sausage, and Hollyhock is still my favourite spot to sit and eat in Richmond), but this is a beautiful setting, and worth a visit.

My only remaining caveat was the service. Some of the staff were very friendly, some rather grumpy, but all of them were unavailable. It was not a lack of staff, unusually, it was just that they all appeared to be somewhere other than where a customer needed them. A number of tables, ours included, found it almost impossible to flag down a member of staff for the bill. It was fairly busy (numbers possibly swollen by tables of people trapped like us), but not heaving. The long, thin, flower-strewn nature of the room doesn’t help (with the staff being at one end, and the majority of the diners at the other), but that is no real excuse. Should I ever be in a position of power (and pray that I am not), it will be mandatory for all restaurants to have a QR code on the table that lets you pay (and if it lets you order, so much the better…). Young’s pubs have adopted this with great enthusiasm, and I (impatient, anti-social fellow that I am) am a great fan.

Conclusion

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

• Service: 3.5/5
• Food: 4.5/5
• Drinks: 3/5
• Value for money (food): 5/5
• Ambiance: 5/5
• Would We Go Back?: 5/5

Petersham Nurseries: https://petershamnurseries.com/