St. JOHN Bread and Wine — Restaurant in London

For the second Valentines Day in a row, St John has made my heart flutter💓 thank you to my wonderful boyfriend for taking me here again! :)

I love Bread and Wine, it’s so bright and lively, and people-watching here is peak! The service is superduper friendly. Do beware that the dishes take a little while to come out but I think that adds to the experience, reminding us to take things slowly and cherish the flavours one by one! Fun fact I was gifted the Nose to Tail cookbook by a friend yesterday so I was really excited to try some featured dishes, and I went home totally inspired.

I had a glass of the house rosé, a type of wine I rarely adore, but their version is perfectly balanced and fresh. Considering getting a bottle for home.

To start we had beetroot, cabbage, creme fraiche and chervil. My boyfriend went ham for this, I was also very satisfied with it! I felt it matched my Lithuanian heritage, reminded me much of the flavours of my childhood summers. A sweet and crisp plate of veggies. Chervil should be used more in salads. The creme fraiche is such a noughty touch and it is absolutely divine.

The second starter, smoked cod’s roe, egg, and cress, reminded me rather of my Swedish side. It came with the crispiest accordion-shaped potatoes, with a mushy interior. The whole dish was salt perfection, with the soft egg giving you a little break. It was really like a deconstructed Swedish egg & caviar sandwich, with the watercress adding a British earthy touch. Balanced and unique!

If you’re feeling like lamb, I urge you to try it here. The remaining bit of my heritage, Norwegian, was evoked by the mutton. It was marvellously flavourful and fatty, there wasn’t even any need to put aioli on the plate, the lamb does all the work. I wanted to inhale the lentils and sauce it was so good and nostalgic.

The mussels were of course also splendid, I loved the way the cider shone through the broth, and the dill added lightness and finesse.

We ordered chocolate cake for dessert which felt like the pinnacle of chocolate cake, irresistably smooth all throughout, rich but not overly sweet, especially when paired with creme fraiche. I must attempt this at home. We also brought home some of their reputable madeleines, their buttery batter made them feel like pancake-biscuits, served as a wonderful breakfast the day after!

If it wasn’t for financial restraint I would go to St John every week. I hope to return next year at least! 💓...

This is the type of place you will either love or hate; it’s quite peculiar. First of all please note St Johns has a few restaurants across London including its famous Michelin starred restaurant in Farringdon. Also this NOT a place for vegans.

FOOD The lady said it was meant to share and 4-5 plates with a mix of small and big plates would do it. We didn’t understand a single dish in the small plates so went straight for large plates. We took the 3 most expensive which includes the venison, the hake and the partridge. The hake was the outstanding dish I would happily eat again but the partridge disgusted us a little especially when the waitress said it may contain traces of bullets from when the bird got shot. Talking about disgusting, we saw TWICE a man pass by the middle of the restaurant with a dead skinned pig on his back, not even sure this is legal to do. We also had a Welsh Rarebit which was the best thing ever but very small portion for 10£. Overall the dishes were super small and very expensive for the simplicity of the serving. Finally we had madeleines for takeaway as it seemed to be a thing here. Honestly they were good but wouldn’t rave about them. Paid £100 for two with no drinks.

STAFF/SERVICE This is the part where I got annoyed. They kept trying to upsell us but then when it came to basics, they were absent: -forgot to bring extra bread which they even offered to me -forgot to refill our water jug -forgot to place the madeleine order which take 15min to make (despite me mentioning them when ordering twice) -we were served one dish after the other all spaced about 10min from each other for some reason even though the group table next to us was getting speedy service

ATMOSPHERE/LOCATION Just opposite Spitafields market, prime location. Atmosphere is a bit like in an old school tavern; small basic tables, basic chairs, basic cutlery, basic dishes but food not served quickly unlike in a tavern. Also the personal space was ridiculous, i was sat 10cm away from the next couple next to us and staff constantly passing behind me.

CONCLUSION: although some dishes were good, I was overall pretty disappointed in the experience and would...

Just to preface, I love St John in Smithfield but haven’t been back in a few years. Food like this is expensive and we don’t have the privilege to eat out like this regularly, but as it was a special occasion, we came to this branch as the other was full.

The service was as expected, very nice, if a little too cool for school. Great buzzy atmosphere and lovely St John wine.

However the food was incredibly disappointing and lived nowhere near up to our last experience.

The food on the whole was incredibly salty.

The Welsh Rarebit is a classic and hard to mess up but the cheese was unusually strong (salty) and lacked much depth of flavour. Splashing Lea & Perrins over it just made it even more savoury. We finished the jug of water extremely fast. The toast was burned underneath.

Unfortunately, the pig cheek was near inedible. I can’t tell if the pig was brined or cured beforehand? But again, insanely salty, the skin was tough and near impossible to cut and eat. It should’ve been carved much smaller but it was mostly rock hard salty lumps. The meat came dressed in a dandelion salad with radish — I thought that would alleviate some of the saltiness, but it too was smothered in a salty vinaigrette. Very very unpleasant.

We also had the squash with green sauce and ricotta. The squash seemed like it was steamed and perhaps a bit undercooked, the flesh of the vegetable was mealy, like a dry paste when chewed, and the ricotta just added to this cloying mouthfeel. There was an oil based sauce underneath that added to the heaviness of the dish. It just didn’t work for us and seemed a really misjudged use of ingredients.

We were going to get dessert but were so disappointed with the food we just got the bill.

Such a shame not to come away feeling satisfied. It felt like we just ate a week’s worth of salt and fat without much balance of flavour or care for the ingredients.

The food wasn’t as thoughtful as last time and it’s tainted St John for me because at those prices, I really can’t justify it.

We were going to let them know, but none of the staff actually asked us how...