An interview with Lonnie from Nanima Asian Kitchen and Café in Kemptown, the proud winner of the Best Value award at the 2025 BRAVOS! Lonnie discusses the immense joy and increased reputation the award brought, their unique daily-changing, pan-Asian family concept, and the secrets to succeeding in the local food scene.
What impact has winning a BRAVO Award had on your business?
Winning a BRAVO Award has made a massively beneficial impact to us, in two main ways. Firstly, it’s made us really very happy! This may sound a little puerile but it goes deeper; anyone who works in this industry can fully appreciate the amount of work and dedication that goes into everything we do, as a small, family-run, local, independent, neighbourhood venue, and so do receive recognition for that and actually win something of this magnitude is just wonderful – it made us very happy and continues to do so! Secondly, it’s certainly helped to extend our reputation far beyond Kemptown and across the city; although we’re still very much dedicated to Kemptown Village and our solid base of regulars, many of which are now true friends,
we have been delighted to welcome guests from beyond our immediate neighbourhood, and that’s been fantastic.
How did it feel to take home the award for Best Value this year?
To be perfectly honest, although we were again nominated in five categories and did very well in all, as was the case in 2024 when we also secured two podium finishes, this was the one we really wanted to win. We were aware that in previous years there were categories for ‘Cheap Eats’ or ‘Eat Well For Less’ but when we spoke with Ivanka and the team we did suggest to them that what they are really trying to establish is an award for the best correlation between cost and quality, ie, value. For Restaurants Brighton to agree too this change, and then for us to go on and win it, was huge!
We know there are dozens and dozens of excellent establishments in the city, but this is the one we really wanted to nail as this does, hopefully communicate exactly – excellent quality and reasonable cost.
Also, I like to think that it’s the award that many industry insiders secretly covet – we knew that we weren’t going to win Best Restaurant or Best International Cuisine or any of the really stand out ones but this is a little like missing out on Best Film or Best Director at the Oscars but carrying home Best Cinematography! Everyone who knows, knows.
Can you describe the concept behind Nanima Asian Kitchen and the kind of experience guests can expect?
What we offer is pretty unique. Firstly, we offer a very wide range of dishes from across the many national cuisines of Asia, as opposed to so many nationally-oriented restaurants offering Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese food etc; we also offer dishes from less common national cuisines, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka etc, and can even focus on more regionally specific dishes from each country. Secondly, the main reason that we can do so is that we don’t ever have a set menu but rather offer a daily-changing selection of dishes, including many vegan and vegetarian dishes as well as non-vegetarian specials, three or four soups each day, lots of other savoury snacks and a range of speciality sweets and desserts, as well as authentic speciality beverages such as Indian Spiced Masala Chai and Vietnamese Coffee. Thirdly, as all our dishes are laid out on bains marie to view and select from, not only does this provide our guests with a variety of goodies to personally choose from and customise their own meals, but it means that we engage with each and every person, describing what’s on offer, answering queries, meeting various dietary requirements etc, and so the service that everyone receives is literally that of hosts welcoming guests, and the response to that has been almost universally positive. But lastly, and perhaps most importantly, our guests are aware that our chef, Nicky, is solely responsible for preparing all the main dishes and soups each day, with her sister Bea contributing many of the homemade samosas, spring rolls and pakoras, and so our guests know they are welcome in a genuinely family-run establishment where they can appreciate the authenticity of the cuisine on offer and enjoy the relaxed atmosphere, and feel at home.
What are your own go-to dishes on the menu—the ones that you feel keep customers coming back?
One of our signature dishes is certainly our Singapore Laksa. Nicky is of Punjabi-Malaysian origin, born and raised just north of Kuala Lumpur and so dishes like this laksa are like mothers’ milk. We offer three varieties – with Silken Tofu, or Chicken, or Seafood – and have many regulars come two or three times a week for this dish alone. Other than this speciality noodle soup, there are other soups that are particularly popular, especially throughout the winter, such as our Chinese Chicken Congee or Vietnamese Chicken Pho, as well as a large repertoire of vegetarian soups, such as our Thai Tom Kha, Japanese Mushroom, Butternut Squash & Coconut Miso or Beetroot and Roasted Red Pepper. But there are very many dishes in the main non-veg section that are enormously popular, from our Malaysian Lamb Curry or Chinese Szechuan Salmon to the Punjabi Butter Chicken and Vietnamese Pork Belly. We always have great rice dishes and noodles too, as well as a variety of veg specials such as Indonesian Sambal Aubergine, Sri Lankan Saag with Coconut, Punjabi Aloo Ghobi, Japanese Mixed Veg Stir Fry… The list is very long indeed.
What do you enjoy most about working in hospitality?
I’m very lucky in that I’m out front serving our guests, talking through the menus and welcoming everyone, making sure that all is as it should be and that people feel looked after so that they can fully enjoy Nicky’s wonderful food, which means that I hear all the feedback from our guests and all the compliments and really positive comments from almost all our diners.
This means that, on average, I’m receiving thanks from literally dozens of people, and that’s a lovely thing to happen each day; it’s extremely gratifying and rewarding, and makes working at Nanima a huge pleasure and privilege.
I then have to communicate this to Nicky in the kitchen! She knows, but it’s not the same when I say it! She does love reading our many five-star reviews, so at least there’s that. Basically, the best thing is – and this goes back to the points above above being a family-run establishment that has developed a great reputation for quality and service – that when our business is recognised as offering something of real value to our community, that’s us being appreciated, on a very direct and personal level, and that makes life worth living.
It was Morris Schwartz who said ‘Devote yourself to loving others; devote yourself to your community around you and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning’. Bingo. That’s it right there.
What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced running Nanima so far, and how did you overcome it?
Well, the first thing was just getting up and running! We first opened in February 2020, and had about one month before the first Covid lockdown kicked in, and so the first fifteen months or so were completely decimated by that whole episode, and it took us until mid-2022 before we could really get up a head of steam and establish ourselves on the Brighton food scene as people were getting back into the groove of going out for food and coffee etc. So we lost a good two years in what should be the most critical time for a new establishment to develop a credible reputation.
However, after getting through this we have been able to extend our reputation far and wide, and getting involved with the BRAVOs for the first time in 2024 certainly helped.
The other main challenges have always been how to successfully establish and maintain what is a very unique model – we are a café and a restaurant; we don’t have a menu but offer a daily-changing selection of dishes; we don’t offer an identifiable menu of specific national cuisine but are gloriously pan-Asian; we sell our own homemade pickles and chilli oils as well as a range of high-quality reusables and lunchboxes, so there’s a retail element to what we do as well… All these things are a challenge to communicate in a world where people mostly expect you to do one thing, and that’s it; we do lot’s of different things, but we have found that once people actually visit and try us out once, it all makes perfect sense. So it’s getting them over to the edge of Kemptown that is probably the biggest challenge of all. Our locals and regulars know all about us; people across the city may have heard of us, but we know we are very far indeed from saturating our potential reach as there are literally thousands of people out there who would love what we do but haven’t been over to us yet. So there’s more to come…
Do you have any exciting plans over the next six months—new menus, events, or changes in the pipeline?
Well, we’re always changing our menus each day, but we do try to offer certain dishes on a more seasonal basis, such as our Vietnamese Papaya Salad, or more warming soups over the winter. One thing that has been extremely successful is our Dinner Club events, which we host on the first Thursday of each month for twelve lucky diners (that is, those who’ve booked quickly!). This is the only time we do anything differently by not having everything laid out on the bains marie for selection but guests specify their preferences from a pre-designed three-course menu and then are served that evening in a relaxed and informal manner. Anyone wishing to be added to our mailing list to receive our monthly menus as soon as they are released can just email us at hello@nanima.co.uk and they’re in! Other than that, we do lots of external catering – about two or three gigs each month – and that’s something we’re looking to extend more over the coming months. We’ve catered for everything from intimate dinner parties, larger house parties and domestic celebrations, corporate events of various kinds, all the way to full-on weddings, so that may well increase over the spring and summer. Brighton’s a great party town, and we’re all about that too!!
