Chic and sensibly cheap

Nyonya has taken over the strange semicircular restaurant that curls around the promontory where Kensington Park Road joins Pembridge Road - it was formerly a chain pizza joint that used to lie in wait for unwary tourists stumbling their way from Notting Hill Gate Tube to the Portobello Road market. Nyonya is a very different kind of restaurant, and one that seems to appeal greatly to the indigenous Hillbillies - it is ultra-modern, pretty chic, sensibly cheap and seriously informal. And all of the above gains added piquancy as the cuisine is downright moody.

The French may crow about traditional 'cuisine grandmère' but the Straits Malays are just as proud of their 'nyonyas', who have the same reputation as culinary matriarchs. Nyonya dishes are a meeting place for Chinese and Malay tastes and cooking techniques - you'll find plenty of coconut cream, some chilli heat, souring from tamarind, and that musty-savoury tang you get from fish sauce or blachan, the seriously stinky shrimp paste.

The room is light and bright, and considering how modern everything looks, the stools are surprisingly comfortable. There are four, long curved tables (three of which seat eight, and one for four) so sharing Wagamama style is the order of the day. Service is friendly and the food arrives briskly on modern plates. The starters include the ubiquitous chicken satay and it is done well here, even if the sauce is a little on the sweet side. On the menu it is claimed that 'blachan chicken' is marinated in prawn paste before being deep-fried - you wouldn't have known, as the strips of chicken arrive like a tastier, less greasy, but bland version of the Colonel's chicken nuggets. Pleasant enough. The dumplings are good, especially if you splash out on a small saucer of 'sambal blachan' - a red sludge made from prawns and chillies that is not over-the-top fiery but does add a belt of heat.

Main courses come in decent-sized portions and taste as if they have been freshly cooked: beef rendang arrives in a clump, and so it should - this dish must be almost dry with the beef very well cooked and the coconut sauce reduced to a paste. Up-front flavours. A dish of cashew-nut prawns is agreeably mild and both prawns and nuts are crunchy. It's worth ordering the nyonya fried rice, which is very rich and sticky and contains a whole store cupboard of odds and ends to give it character - shrimp, chicken, peas, egg. There is also a long list of 'hawker favourites' that includes several 'meals-in-a-bowl' - a Penang Assam laksa, char mee noodles, Hokkien prawn mee soup. You can drink tea, and you can sample the moody puds called 'nyonya kuih', but for matters of thirst it is hard to oppose a cold Tiger beer with this kind of spicy food. Hurrah for the nyonyas!

Nyonya
2a, Kensington Park Road, W11 3BU