London Day 1 - Dinner at St John

We arrived in London from Paris on October 21^st via the Eurostar train to celebrate a very special 7^th anniversary with an 8 night stay at The Savoy Hotel.  I booked dinner at St John Restaurant months in advance and we were joined by very dear, close friends, Brian from Madrid and Phil from Victoria.  St John Restuarant ( www.stjohnrestaurant.com , 26 St John Street, London, 020 3301 8069) is owned by Fergus Henderson and his wife who started the ‘nose to tail’ food trend in 1994, with specialties like roasted bone marrow, veal sweetbreads and ox heart.  It was a bit of an ordeal to find the restaurant then an even greater ordeal once we were there!

We arrived a few minutes late after navigating a huge smoker crowd outside, and a huge bar crowd inside before getting to the restaurant entrance which lead us to a smoking hot (temperature) dining room.  All of the staff, dressed in white to appear as butchers, are super professional and knowledgeable.  Our server told us about some interesting specials, we ordered the house Bordeaux and chose our starters.  Our starters consisted of the special squash soup, grilled sardines, crispy pigs ears and calf brains on braised chicory.  Each were prepared using simple techniques and were all fabulous.  The sardines were deboned and grilled with a simple vinaigrette to allow the flavour of the sardine to shine through.  The squash soup topped with tiny croutons, one of the few vegetarian starters, was one of the most flavourful vegetarian soups I have ever tried.  The crispy pigs ears were the type of dish you could serve to anyone who loves deep fried food and they would love it, as long as they didn’t know what they were actually eating. Similarly, the lamb brains I ordered were prepared in the traditional grenoblaise style with lemons, capers and olive oil.  Similar to sweetbreads, although not breaded, the texture and flavour were even more delicate than sweetbreads.

Our main courses were more disappointing.  The grouse I ordered exceeded my expectations, with a side of grouse foie gras on toast and mashed potatoes.  The grouse itself was cooked medium rare, tender and gamey as I expected.  However, the other main courses did not meet expectations.  The middlewhite (pork chop) was quite thin and exceedingly fatty.  Both Jeff and Brian ordered the braised hare with swede (chard), but were disappointed with the gamey flavour, portion sizes and lack of tenderness.  We expected the hare to be fall off the bone tender but it was a bit of a challenge to eat.  As we approached the end of our main courses one of us had an issue with a rock hard hare bone which resulted in an abrupt end to our dinner.  I had looked forward to dinner at St John since 2009, but was disappointed by our collective experience.  That being said, it was a real treat to meet our dear friend Brian on this very special evening in London.