Also, my apologies for lack of decent pics - my camera was stolen before I had chance to upload them!!
St. John in Smithfield is nothing if not controversial. Its champions talk of food free from frippery and the devotion to forgotten meat cuts, ‘nose-to-tail’ and such like. It has, after all, featured on the ‘Top 50 Restaurants in the World’ list for a while, has held on to a Michelin star for 2 years and boasts a list of celebrity foodies and chefs who rave about it.
However, its critics are less satisfied with the pared-down approach to dining and question whether St. John really has a place in the constellation of london Michelin restaurants.
The restaurant finds itself in a refurbished smokehouse in Clerkenwell – it has deliberately been kept minimal: open plan, bare walls, no art, paper tablecloths etc. It really is the antithesis to the usual Michelin glamour. The antidote, some would say.
The service was friendly and casual (the first time I’ve ever been served by a waiter in a blood-stained apron!) and the menu was full of intriguing things. To start I ordered a warm octopus and potato salad. It was everything octopus should be and so frequently isn’t; meaty and toothsome without being chewy or slimy and the dressing was a savoury, tangy delight. The pig skin salad sitting opposite me was a generous pile of crunchy, deeply porky crackling shards and nicely dressed watercress. My friend reported goosebumps after the 1st mouthful. The portions were ample, but boths dishes were pretty much dumped on the plates.
When ordering our main courses we had differing approaches: I wanted to try something completely new to me and he wanted to see how well St. John could prepare a simple, standard dish. To that end I had the poached lambs’ tongues and he the roast duck breast. The tongues were a revelation; succulent, soft and salty with a deep lamby flavour – not as ‘offally’ as I had expected. They were paired with crunchy shavings of blanched carrot, whole radishes, some rocket leaves and white beans. I ordered some boiled new potatoes as well and these were genuinely the most delicious I have ever eaten – with the fantastic deep, buttery flavour that I have only ever found in roast spuds before. Sadly, my fellow foodie’s experience was not as good. His duck was fairly moist and pink, but surprisingly flavourless – actually pretty bland. The skin, though browned, was soft and devoid of the savoury intensity and crispiness that good roast duck should have (I am pretty sure it was cooked sous-vide). It was accompanied by a lone braised turnip; halved and with a slightly tough skin and a splash of thin pan juices from the duck. The dish was pretty charmless and left him sorely underwhelmed. It was not poorly cooked per se, at least not enough to be returned to the kitchen, but both of us felt we had cooked better at home: not something you would expect from a restaurant in this league.
We decided against puddings (Paul A. Young chocolates is walking distance from the restaurant and we wanted to save room!) and left St. John with mixed feelings.
2 courses and a glass of wine each, potatoes and a side salad came to £76 including service.
On reflection, I feel that St. John is a good place to go to try well-cooked examples of the less frequently used parts of the beast. Next time I feel an offal craving, I will be back to see what their ever-changing menu has to challenge my tastebuds. However, I find their deliberately spartan, no-frills mess hall ethos to be oddly more pretentious than most of the restaurants they are trying to set themselves apart from. If meat is to be unadorned and cooked simply, then it must be nothing short of excellent. If a duck breast is the only thing sitting on a plate costing close to £20, then it should be the paragon to all duck breasts, not a lament to the misuse of a waterbath. I do not think that a Michelin inspector eating the same meal would have allowed them to keep their controversial star.
After our lunch in Smithfield and a wander around Islington and Soho, we decided to see if we could find a more inspiring, better value meal to put the smiles back on our faces. I am yet to read a single bad word about Polpetto, so figured this would be a good bet.
We were not entirely sure we were in the right place as we wandered up the unassuming staircase by The French House pub on Dean St. However, at the top, we were greeted warmly and shown to a small table somewhat wedged in between others. The 28 cover restaurant is crammed into a single room above the pub but, at 6.45, when we arrived, it was already pretty busy and the atmosphere was palpably alive.
We ordered an Aperol spritz each while we perused the menu. It quickly became clear that we both wanted to order the entire menu and it took a lot of discussion and willpower before we had whittled it down to a mere 6 dishes to share.
The 1st to arrive was a carpaccio of swordfish adorned with pink peppercorns and dill. The plate was tiny, but the flavours huge –grins were instantly restored to our faces and our mouths were left watering for the following dishes. Next came a pizzeta with cured pork shoulder and pickled peppers – as thin and crispy as any I have ever had and incredibly moreish, and a bruschetta of ricotta, grilled fennel and prosciuto. The fennel was wafer thin and char-striped; its cool, smoky slipperiness complimenting the salty ham perfectly. Warm lentils with creamy burrata and heady basil oil were hungrily demolished. Borlotti beans with wild garlic and rosemary crumbs were good, but I would have liked to have seen more of the wild garlic; it was a little lost amongst the beans. Finally the braised ox cheek on white polenta arrived. The cheek was so tender that we could literally eat it with spoons, the flavour was deeply beefy accented with slivers of olive and some melt-in-the-mouth cherry tomatoes. The polenta was very soft – wetter than I am used to, but silky and lovely nonetheless.
My dessert was a small, dense polenta cake doused liberally with an orange and campari syrup and a splodge of yoghurt icecream. Pleasingly tart, slightly bitter and very moreish. My friend’s flourless chocolate and walnut cake was a little dry and crumbly and rather heavy – but tasty.
2 spritzers, 6 sharing dishes, 2 puds and service came to £69. We waddled back down the stairs feeling fat and happy and vowing to return soon to try the rest of the menu. The only thing which spoilt an otherwise excellent evening was the fact that our table was very close to the adjacent one, which belonged to the most irritating diners I have ever come across – they were shouting, or rather bellowing conversation at each other across the table, on topics ranging from better restaurants they’d eaten in to French prostitutes, all the time swearing, guffawing and gesticulating wildly – it was almost impossible to keep my own thread of conversation going and I struggled not to butt in and ask them to pipe down a bit! Space is at a premium in Soho and I don’t begrudge Polpetto trying to squeeze as many tables into their outstanding little eatery as possible – we were just unlucky, I guess, with our neighbours!
You might wonder why I am comparing these two restaurants. It's not just that I ate at them both in 1 day, but rather that I think they share similar ideals – unpretentious, honest grub, celebrating the ingredients rather than aesthetics and high concept. One may be rooted in traditional/historical English cuisine and the other in vibrant Italian fare but they are not that different in essence.
However I feel that, where Polpetto wins, St. John fails. Polpetto do their best to excite and titilate you in a buzzing, friendly environment, whereas eating at St. John you feel as if you are being challenged to appreciate their food. It is as though they are picking a fight; inviting and relishing the controversy, daring you to disagree. This, to my mind, detracts from the experience.
26 St. John St,
London
EC1M 4AY
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Upstairs at The French House
49 Dean St,
London.
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