St. John is a group of restaurants focusing on “nose to tail” dining, using every part of the animals they slaughter, and often feature uncommon cuts or offal.
The original restaurant was opened in Smithfield, London by Fergus Henderson, who had no formal training in cooking, and originally trained as an architect before opening the French House Dining Room with his wife in 1992. He left to open the original St. John restaurant in 1994, which won a Michelin star in 2009 and has held it since. The location I visited, in Marylebone, was opened in 2022.
The space is pretty spartan, with the open kitchen and a bar counter with a few tables on the ground floor, and the main dining hall in the basement where banquette benches are built into the walls. The basement room serves as a mix between a dining room, wine storage and is decidedly utilitarian - a menu hides access to electric and plumbing control panels, and exposed pipes and control valves jut out of the walls and snake along the ceiling.
The menu at St John changes daily, based on what is available and is posted online right before the meal, so you never quite know what you’re doing to get. The menu is short - maybe 25 dishes in total, split into starters, small dishes, mains, sides, then desserts. The concept is sharing dishes, and they recommended 2 starters, 2 small dishes and a main with some sides for two people.
Not being very hungry, we did a selection of starters and small dishes and decided to skip the mains. Perhaps we picked poorly, but nearly every dish was cold and in the form of a toast or salad. In retrospect, I wish the server would’ve mentioned something and we could’ve picked a greater variety of dishes.
Their signature deep fried rarebit, the only dish that never leaves the menu. A deep fried cheese and bread roll, it was served with bottle of Worcestershire sauce and we were encouraged to sauce generously. A gooey, cheesy, doughy center with a crispy shell. A pretty good start.
The pickled sardines, served with garlic, lemon zest, rosemary and olive oil. I was a bit worried that it would be too sour, but I was incredibly impressed at how well balanced it was. I usually don’t like sardines, but there was no sign of fishiness at all and it was probably the single highlight of the night.
Some warm sourdough and salted butter. They encouraged us to dip the bread in the pickled sardine oil, and that was a great call. We barely used any butter at all.
Picked brown crab on toast - a bit wet and soggy, and a bit of tart from the lemon juice firming up the crab meat and a little bit of bitter from the crab innards. Okay, not bad.
Unfortunately, it started to go downhill from here. The ox liver on bitter greens and capers. A bit minerally from the iron in the liver, with hits of salt and bitter from the capers and some of the herbs in the salad. Not terrible, maybe a bit saltier than ideal.
The pork skin on red cabbage. I really wanted to like this. I love chicharrones and these ones were nearly perfect - crispy, well seasoned, and if it was the chicharrones alone, it would’ve been amazing, but the red cabbage salad was saltier than the chicharrones, and additional capers added even more salt. Ultimately, the only flavour happening here was saltiness, and it was unbearable.
The side salad, with a caper and shallow vinaigrette on a lettuce wedge. Visually pretty appealing, but way overdressed and very sour.
The beetroot and egg on some mixed greens. In comparison to the last two hits of saltiness and sour, this salad was relatively well balanced. A little sweet from the beetroot, a bit of sour from the vinaigrette, a bit of salty from yet more capers . Still wasn’t a great salad, but just not actively bad.
I was pretty disappointed by now, but the apple and blackberry crumble managed to outperform my much lowered expectations. Served with a small pitcher of thickened sweetened cream, the apple crumble came fresh out of the oven. Piping hot inside, contrasting with the crispy crumbly crust. Took me awhile to eat it because it was so hot. Delicious, and worth every bite.
St. John is the first restaurant I've hit on this London trip I would not return to. An interesting concept that I wanted to like, the pickled sardines and apple crumble were pretty amazing, but the misses were really, really bad. In the same price range, just go to Brat, or the Harwood Arms instead.
Total damage: 130 GBP/2 people