Review: MURDER ON THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, Six by Nico

Word on the street is that there’s a new murder mystery adventure in town so, after putting on my metaphorical deerstalker and hoicking the collar of my coat up, I took a walk down to the mean streets of, er, Canary Wharf.

The sun had set, the moon had risen and I was in the lobby of a restaurant. That alone should have set the alarm bells screaming louder than a cat that has left its tail where its tail shouldn’t be. What kind of business does a theatre critic have sitting among the well-heeled diners of E14? I was so far off my usual beat that I suspected my editor was already priming the hounds with smells from my old notebooks. The answer to why I found myself here lay deep within Six by Nico’s darkened interior (dun dun duuun…).

The restaurant chain has built itself around Scottish-Italian chef and owner Nico Simeone’s senary concept: every six weeks, a different theme takes over and a related taster menu of six courses is served up in all of their seventeen establishments. That doesn’t always mean a brand spanking new theme: in the past, hits like The Chippie and Childhood have been revived. If that sounds like a negative level of ambition on their part, the latest idea swings the dial in the complete opposite direction.

Titled “Murder On The Midnight Express”, it’s the first time that Six by Nico has put a theatrical event like this in front of their diners. Set in France in the 1930s and aboard the titular train, we’re here to find out how its newly appointed head chef Gustave Laroche came to an untimely demise. He was appointed to create a new menu in collaboration with his fashion designer wife Veronica but he’s been found lying face up on the floor of his kitchen, his whites now red thanks to a bullet in the back. The whereabouts of the fatal slug is unknown as is the identity of the killer but the police do have their eyes on who could have dunnit. As we work our way through Laroche’s planned meal, we find out more about the suspects and - crucially - who possessed that holy trinity of crime novels: motive, means and opportunity. 

The list of possible shooters has been narrowed down to four by the local gendarme and we’ve been called in to help point the finger in the right direction. The spouse is any gumshoe’s first port of call so let’s start there: Veronica persuaded her brother Phillip to employ her husband despite the chef having a criminal record for disorderly conduct and gambling. Could she have become tired of his hot temper and wandering eye? As both his boss and brother-in-law, did avid hunter Phillip have a reason to use his shotgun on Gustave?

Then there's the private doctor Victor who is on board at Veronica’s personal request - are the pair up to a bit of nefarious scheming? Finally, there’s the charming young social climber Vivienne who was hired by Laroche as a waitress despite having zero in the way of prior customer service experience. Did she want more from the acclaimed chef than he was willing to give?

It’s not the most nuanced or original of setups and, indeed, the whole premise of investigating period-specific murder mysteries aboard a train while munching away is hardly unique. Neil Kelso’s brilliant Dead On Time is set at the time of the 1951 Festival of Britain and passengers on the historic Belmond locomotive work their way through a list of ten suspects and five courses as they ride through the Kent countryside. Then there’s The Murdér Express in Bethnal Green which blends comedy and crime-solving in a glamorous 1920s East London environment. So what makes this particular production noteworthy?

Well, for starters, this is Six by Nico’s first foray into immersive theatre and they haven’t gone into it half-heartedly. The evidence is presented over the duration of the meal in the style of Dennis Wheatley famous "crime dossiers" which contained documents and items of evidence like pills.

The most important artefact is an impressively detailed notebook that provides the suspects’ backgrounds and why they are under suspicion as well as descriptions of each dish coming our way. A newsheet recounts local events and contains a few clues that can help us. We’re also given detective tools (including a magnifying glass and a red-filter decoder) with which to dig out more information as we go along. More physical evidence is served up to us with the courses, each of which have titles like “Room 36” and “Engine Room” alluding to aspects of the continuing investigation. 

The food itself is a thing of wonder, especially to an Italian brought up on hearty portions of delicious stodge. It’s a taster menu so there is no point complaining about the portion sizes. I’m no kind of gourmand (pizza, pasta and Nutella are my own holy trinity) so I brought along my highly knowledgeable friend Christopher Willoughby who, in between gadding about the planet as an international cabaret superstar, reached the quarterfinals of BBC’s MasterChef in 2023 and the finals last year.

Overall, we were impressed by the presentation and quality of the food and - more importantly - how well it stuck to its theme. Here was a menu that showed someone with culinary imagination had clearly read the assignment and could think outside the plate. Inspired throughout by early 20th century French cuisine, each and every dish managed the tricky feat of being incredibly Insta-friendly while seamlessly fitting into the murder-mystery storyline. 

Admittedly, things didn’t get off to a good start. A well-presented smidge of goat’s cheese mousseline served up alongside even tinier portions of salted and pickled raspberry and heirloom beetroot was accompanied by wilted nasturtium leaves that looked to have given up the ghost; it appeared that Laroche wouldn’t be the only murder victim tonight. Visually, though, it cleverly evoked either a gunshot wound or a kiss – an intelligent link to the first clue brought to us: a note with a lipstick mark.

From there, like any murder case, it was all ups and downs. The smoked ham hock terrine was way too salty but the deconstructed “tartiflette” (their quote marks) with smoked bacon jam was a triumph of concept and taste. The next clue was another ingenious touch and this time very edible: two long, thin cannoli-like cylinders in a crunchy, translucent and paper-thin casing contained a smooth cheesy stuffing and filled at one end with a dark paste. With the mini-magnifying glass provided, we scanned the evidence and narrowed the suspect pool to possible smokers. This being 1930s France, though, that didn’t help much; even if they weren’t pictured holding a pipe or cigarette, everyone looked like they puffed away on Gauloises all day long just for the sheer hell of it.

A delicate fish dish (a morsel of poached sole that came with burnt apple, cauliflower purée and - more quote marks - “tartare sauce”) was overshadowed when the main meat course arrived in the form of a column of chicken ballotine. This course being labelled “The Engine Room”, there was obviously going to be some tie-in and the charcoal emulsion made the taste buds sing in a surprisingly pleasing way. I’ve eaten charcoal when baked into pizza crusts but pairing the smokiness of the bacon around the chicken with the smooth charcoal flavour was an elegant touch as was the Jerusalem artichoke that came along for the ride.

I’ll admit that, when we’d finished the dessert and discovered who the murderer was (I got it wrong, Christopher got it right), I had slightly homicidal feelings of my own. No-one makes tiramisù like my mother but, then again, she’s had decades of experience (and plenty of willing test subjects) to perfect her slab of velvety heaven. I wasn’t expecting anything that good but the version served here missed the spot by a country mile.

Biscuits that should have had a longer and deeper acquaintance with espresso were buried under a foamy snowdrift of what Christopher told me was vanilla espuma. There was also a playful final clue (a bullet-shaped chocolate with an embedded date) and a welcome bottom layer of something crunchy and tasting of coffee but it would take more than that to make up for this disappointing deconstruction. 

Murder On The Midnight Express is probably guilty of misusing the word “immersive” to describe the overall experience; at no point did we feel that we were really across the Channel almost a century ago. There’s something incredibly laudable, though, about the professional approach to this new venture, not least the fantastic attention to detail and how closely everything adhered to the core narrative without compromising the culinary qualities that bring Six by Nico’s fans back to their tables time after time.

The fine dining sector is often accused of navel-gazing pretension as they compete to create the craziest concoctions but this enticing mix of theatre and food may well be the combination that brings in a whole new wave of punters.

Six by Nico’s Murder On The Midnight Express continues until 9 March.

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