Nathanial Mortley is the owner and head chef behind one of London's most exciting new openings, 2210. Branded Conde Nast Traveller's 'One to Watch' at the 2025 Top New Restaurant Awards, he humbly refers to his success as "falling into the chefing thing." As you would expect, he's always been a foodie, but growing up there were little to no role models in the culinary world whose footsteps he could follow. "Except Ainsley Harriot, there were no black chefs, so there's no one that I really looked up to..." And so, his first experience of cooking was helping his aunt with her cake making business. Following that, it was a way to keep him on the straight and narrow. He attended Lewisham College, did an NVQ level one chef diplomacy, "and then I thought, oh, this is kind of cool, it's all right, and then I started making money from it."
The Beginnings
After securing his diplomacy, Natty first started working for the 2012 Olympics, cooking for the athletes in the Asian food court. He then worked at Westminster University serving catering food but his first experience in "a proper restaurant" was The Oblyx, on the 32nd floor of The Shard. Natty's first impression was a good one: "I can see all the diners eating, everything's all snazzy, and everything's fresh... I accepted the job that same day, and I started two days after".
Fine dining professional kitchens can be a tough environment to work in, but Natty only has positive things to say about his experience here. He considers it a transitional period, "I actually started to enjoy it, and I started to learn, and the more I started to learn, I wanted to continue learning." The head chef took him under his wing, to the point where within three years, he'd learned all the sections within the kitchen. But his learning was not limited to food- it included different cultures, how to work consistent hours, and in Natty's words "the hard graft".
The Social Scepticism
"You go to the gym every day, you're gonna get hench, do you know what I mean?"
Initially, Natty had concerns about entering the social media cooking space. Like many of us, he was apprehensive of putting himself out there online. "The penny dropped when I was in jail, and I was sitting there thinking, the social media cooking space, I've been talking about this for years, I can do that, because really and truly, there's no black Caribbean chefs from south east London doing nice food." He admits it was embarrassing at first, and risky, especially in a time pre-TikTok and instagram reels, and he didn't know if his demographic would be accepting, "but guess what, it worked... To echo my social media manager, just post your content, post whatever, anything that you believe in, just post it."
The Social Fame
"I was doing it over drill music, over hard rap music, so it was just a bit of people being like, what the hell's going on here?"
Unless you knew Natty personally, you wouldn't have known he was a chef. He changed his Instagram name to the one we're all familiar with now, @Nattycancook, and got a social media manager. "The first video, bearing in mind I had 900 followers, it got 178,000 views on Instagram." For Natty, this was his preview video, the shock revelation that he can cook. The following videos gained so much traction because they had never been seen nor done before. "A ballotine of jerk chicken with a jerk chicken mousse, potato terrine, a hard-dough bread, scotch bonnet gel, a curry sauce and herb oil" was the dish that got him to finals of Young Chef of the Year, and went viral on all the platforms. Following that, it was "a lasagna, but then I pressed it and fried all four sides of it. I made a mornay sauce, I split the mornay over the herb oil, and then I had croutons with it". Combining the skills he had learned in his fine-dining experience with his passion for the flavours and dishes of the Carribbean, he mastered creations that veered from the traditional that got people excited. And this was even before deep-fried apple crumble.
The Restaurant
"I want it to be fine dining and getting accolades, but I'm not losing who I am, or the identity that I've put out there."
In October, Natty opened his first Pan-Caribbean restaurant, 2210. Community plays a huge part in Caribbean cuisine, and this sense of community and spirit is not lost in Natty's place, despite it being a fine-dining setting. "All my family work for me. My mum, my aunt, she's the operation manager, my cousin, both my godmothers, so it's really got that family feel to it." Plus, with his family there all the time, they can begin to build a rapport with returning customers.
"It just takes a new wave of chefs coming through, and all knocking at the door for us to get recognised."
The name 2210 marks the date his beloved grandmother passed away, the one who first inspired his love for cooking. Through this restaurant, Natty honours her legacy with every plate, whilst also redefining what Caribbean cooking can be. "We're the only cuisine without a serious place, so why can't we have somewhere we can go and celebrate culture, and enjoy music, and dress up nice? If I can help show that we deserve this spot, and there can be more things that are popping up off the back of this, then I've achieved what I'm wanting to achieve."
"I want to do things which if I was a customer, I would want to go there to enjoy it."
So is a Michelin star the end goal? "Ideally, yeah. It might not necessarily be at this restaurant, because the traditional Michelin spec isn't somewhere where they'll be doing brunches and things like that, but I'm not your traditional chef. I'm not your traditional type of guy, so I'm doing things which I believe are fun, and young, and keeping to my identity, because who doesn't love a brunch? It's not a traditional, everyday restaurant, where everything's very strict, but in terms of the food level, yeah, I believe the food could definitely do it."
"My favourite dish is the duck. I think the duck is top tier."
For a fine-dining restaurant, his portion sizes are designed to be filling. Natty's favourite dish, the duck, for example, is a generous dish of "a pimento-infused duck breast with a Guyana cook-up" which is pumpkins with spring onions, thyme, garlic, tomatoes, and a scotch bonnet, all roasted off and caramelised, added to coconut milk, reduced down and blended into a puree. "Then there's the 14 hour confit duck leg made into a croquette, a spiced pumpkin bristle and a pickled red onion gel, a tempura shisho leaf, and finished with a jus, more like a kind of jerk jus, but without too much spice in it, do you get what I mean?" The medley of flavours and textures sound too delicious to comprehend, and the description alone is enough to boost this restaurant to the top of my list.
The Hard Graft
"I'm putting up job specs and people are messaging saying, is this a 35 hour contract, I don't really want to do more than that. And I'm thinking, well, are you being for real?"
Comparing the professional kitchen now to when he started his career 13 years ago, Natty admits that everything has changed; "there was no such thing as HR, HR is your head chef, and if you don't like something, you better just bugger off..." He recalls working up to 95 hours a week when he was 21 years old, and while the new and improved work conditions certainly have their benefits, Natty has found that the drive and determination, the willingness to work hard has suffered as a result. People are moving up in positions quickly, and this isn't something that can be rushed. You can't become a sous-chef overnight and without hard work and experience, "you're gonna meet someone who's come from a banging restaurant, who comes as a chef de partie, and they're gonna run rings around you. The dedication is needed."
The Final Piece of Advice
"Don't jump between too many restaurants, if you're going somewhere, aim to stick it out for a minimum of a year because one, it looks good on your CV, shows that you're committed. Two, prior to a year or nine months, you really haven't learned. You want to go somewhere and absorb as much as possible and leave with all their ideas and move on to somewhere else, then that's when you can flip things into your own thing. I suppose just have that willingness to learn, and don't rush the learning process."
2210's Christmas menu drops on Wednesday 3rd December.
