Six by Nico Aberdeen — Restaurant in Aberdeen City

After a very disappointing first experience with the vegan Street Food menu, I recently went to Six by Nico again to try the vegan Fun Fair menu. In summary, I had an even worse experience.

Starting with the venue itself, it is always very loud and uncomfortably busy. The music and general noise is so high that we can't hear the waiter's explanation nor they can properly hear our requests. There were delays and mistakes with our orders (meat coming in place of the veggie option more than once) which caused considerable delays, and we were still shoved out of there to give the table to someone else.

The menu can look very interesting in paper, but what you get feels like a cheap and ill-thought-out version of what is written, particularly for the veggie and vegan menus. I ate vegan, a friend ate veggie and a third one got the regular menu, for context. The veggie and vegan menus are even cheaper and worse versions of the regular menu, as they would usually substitute the meat of diary products for what looked like a random vegetable choice, that is, when it was even replaced! In the Fun Fair menu, a beef burger was substituted by a pickle (a pickle! with so many amazing meat alternatives in the market), fish by a whole baked carrot and pork and other meats in the last course weren't even replaced, they just took the meat out and served the remaining sauces and pieces of vegetables. So the veggie and vegan option literally came with less food!

I have similar complains for the previous menu (Street Food), were the meat that was central for the dishes was substitute by tofu and jackfruit. Usually, I love creative ways to substitute meat with these two, but both were made very plain. No marinate or appropriate seasoning seemed to have been used, so they didn't taste like much.

Now, on top of the underwhelming menu, you pay almost double to get "paired wines". First, the glasses are always quite full, so it is way too much to have 5 glasses with these small courses. This option could be cheaper and come with half the wine. Secondly, the pairing is not generally great but, again, it is even worse for veggies and vegans. Everyone gets the same wine selection but if the main ingredients for each course have completely different tastes, they obviously won't pair as well. It is easy to imagine that pairing a Merlot with a beef burger might go very differently compared to pairing it with a fried pickle. Dessert wines also felt usually too dry for the very sweet desserts being served (for all menus).

In conclusion, Six by Nico might be interesting if your priority is taking nice pictures of the courses, as the presentation is indeed nice. But the experience itself is quite underwhelming in terms of taste and ambience. Of course it might be less costly than other tasting menus, but there are ways to use inexpensive ingredients in a smarter and more delicious way. I find it completely unreasonable to charge the same amount for the veggie and vegan manus. If you are not going to be able to deliver a decent quality menu, make the veggie option less expensive, or admit you cannot provite a menu of comparable quality and simply do not offer it. (I did got a discount on the day after complaining, but it would be ideal if in the future it didn't...

Very excited to come here given all the hype from people who had visited their other chains around the UK or had tried the home by Nico. As expected on opening weekend the restaurant was completely packed including the bar area which was nice to see in Aberdeen! The idea is you have 6 courses as a tasting menu which follows a set theme. This theme changes every 6 weeks from what I understand. There is a regular menu and a vegetarian menu - the good thing is you can pick and choose between the menus so if you don't like one of the courses you can switch it with the vegetarian menu and vice versa. You have the option of going with a wine pairing with the courses of food. Service staff were very friendly and had lots of work to do as there were many courses to deliver. The theme we had was 'the chipper' a brilliant take on fish and chips but much more refined. You had the option For our meal we went with the 'snack' which was an appetiser of sourdough bread and oyster butter along with smoked cod croquettes. I'd say the croquettes were one of the best things we ate so would recommend this. Overall the food was beautifully presented and a lot of effort went into the menu as well as creation of sauces and emulsions on the plate. My favourite course was probably the fish supper as this was the kind of thing you'd get from a very good seafood restaurant. There were smoke effects in the fifth dish which added to the aura of the restaurant. The final course was a dessert which was famously created in Aberdeen, the deep fried Mars bar (I believe the Carron in Stonehaven but don't quote me on that) - this was an excellent take with chocolate pave, and a first for me which was an irn bru sorbet. I tip my hat to you six by Nico as this was a very well thought out dessert.

As this was quite an expensive restaurant in comparison to others in Aberdeen I'll be a little more critical. Improvements can be made in cohesion between the courses, there were times you were waiting two to three times longer between certain courses. At a point we thought we had been forgotten about and got our courses in the wrong order. This is however a brand new restaurant with new staff and you expect an adjustment period. I would say the manager on the floor was excellent and seemed to be aware of all the customers and was directing the team effectively considering how busy it was. The other room for improvement would be better ventilation. As nice a touch it was having the smoky effects with the food we felt the smoke lingered and left you with an unsettled feeling in the stomach.

Overall I'm very glad we went, would recommend to others and I'm looking forward to finding out what the next...

First visit, had very high expectations for it from what people have told us. The first dish which was ‘Nugget of the Yellow Brick' was amazing. The start was strong and we really enjoyed it and were looking forward to coming dishes. An interesting dish with a lovely taste. Rating it 10/10. The next dish ‘Scarecrow ‘ was lovely, the pork was cooked perfectly, soft, not rubbery. Presentation fun and unique. Rating it 7.5/10. ‘Tin Woodman & Cowardly Lion’, this dish was an unusual taste that definitely is for an acquired taste, not myself in this case and my husband. We both felt that the dish was not to our taste at all and rating it at 2/10, it had some interesting tastes that we did like but the majority was not nice and the after taste stayed for long. Coming up was ‘Deadly Poppy Field’, the fish was pretty good but we could taste the oil that it was cooked in quite significantly. The 3 types of extra that came with it weren’t bad at all. Overall rating at 6/10. ‘The Wicked Witch’ was the next dish, the dish I think was the smallest out of all which I didn’t exactly like, the chicken was juicy and soft, risotto was overcooked and on a watery side (tasting like water), the pork on the side was tasty and crunch and the black sauce was lovely. Rating at 8/10. For this dish we also got the add on extra which was ‘Southern Spiced Prawn & Pork Belly Skewer, Wakame Salad, Seaweed Ranch Dressing ‘, would I say it was worth it? No, the prawns the the tiniest I have ever seen, it was sort of over-salted for myself at least and didn’t bring much to the experience. The last item on the menu was a dessert, it was an outstanding end to our dinner, called ‘The Emerald City’. The sorbet was amazingly done, the cheesecake not too sweet, soft. The deep fried mars was tasty, and a surprising addition to us as we didn’t expect it. Presentation of dishes amazing. The drinks come with lovely presentations and interesting ways of serving them. Service was amazing as well, every single dish was presented to us with a good description and little show some. The staff were always smiling and doing their best. Food verses price, mmm probably not again, the price is quite high for the amount food you get plus that some of it wasn’t to our taste. Both myself and husband are not picky eaters but that third dish was really off...