School of St. John

Joe Warwick

SINCE the mid '90s, London has recast itself as an international restaurant capital that today is mentioned by those who eat out for a living in the same breath as Paris, New York and Tokyo. While the sane amongst its champions would never claim that it beats New York for sheer scale and breadth, Paris for the finest French cooking or Tokyo for Japanese, London’s restaurant scene now boasts a diversity and singular energy that makes it undeniably world class.

Aside from its growing coterie of glammed-up celebrity favourites, London now has French and Italian restaurants on a par with those on mainland Europe and fashionable Asian eateries and tapas bars to add to what was an already an enviable stable of affordable ethnic restaurants. Anyone searching for confirmation that London is now being taken seriously as a dining destination need look no further than the arrival in recent years of big name French chefs such as Jöel Robuchon, Pierre Gagnaire and Alain Ducasse who have felt the need to open outposts here - an unimaginable scenario less than a decade ago.
The only conundrum for anyone wishing to use this good news to vindicate British food of its sadly stodgy overseas image - where it's still the staple target of smart-arses from San Francisco to Shanghai - is that the basis for London's restaurant boom and the exciting new wave of British restaurants has largely been based on food that's anything but British. Even those two omnipresent British culinary exports, Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, run restaurants that by and large champion French and Italian food respectively. Even when the ingredients are sourced from the UK, the cooking always seems to be foreign.

The one longstanding exception is St. John, a restaurant that, since it opened in October 1994 on St John Street in a former smokehouse near Smithfield market, has in its own way redefined what British food can be about. Fronted by chef Fergus Henderson, from the beginning St. John's philosophy was about reviving and reinventing traditional British recipes and what he dubbed 'nose-to-tail eating'. This, roughly speaking, cast Henderson as a culinary Womble that made use of the bits of pieces that, at that time, everyday British chefs tended to leave behind. He cooked trotters, tripe, pigs' ears and tails, duck hearts, bone marrow, oxtail and the occasional squirrel. The restaurant's logo, a flying pig, summed up both the playful sense of humour behind St. John and the uphill battle it took to make it work. Yet, somehow, he succeeded in making unfashionable offal, awfully fashionable.

The twice-daily changing menu at St. John moved with the seasons and in truth owed a lot to rustic French cooking, both in its offal love, baking of crusty bread, cakes and pies and adherence to seasonality. But despite that, there was still something both undeniably modern and British about St. John, from its all-white utilitarian environment (recently given a fresh lick of paint but apart from that largely unchanged since it opened), to the terse menu descriptions; from the huge Welsh rarebits served as a bar snack to the appearance on the menu of dishes such as Devilled Kidneys on toast; pheasant and trotter pie; and Eccles cake and Lancashire cheese.

A second more informal outpost, St. John Bread & Wine, this time built around a bakery and a wine shop, opened in nearby Spitalfields in 2003. It launched with a staggered menu that ran all day from breakfast to dinner, reflecting the British seasonal St. John approach but more tailored to tapas-style sharing.

Since then there's been a small but pleasing outcrop of restaurants opened across London, some from former St. John alumni, others just inspired by the restaurant’s philosophy, that operate hearty, daily-changing seasonal menus, pleasingly lacking in pretension, that are undeniably, unapologetically British in their execution.

ONE of the first to follow in the footsteps of St. John was the Anchor & Hope, an economically tarted-up '70s boozer with an exceedingly good line in simple seasonal cooking, sitting in the shade of a Southwark council block. The traces of St. John, with a love of offal, big bits of beast and rustic simplicity come from one of the founding chefs, Jonathon Jones, who worked there back in the day.

Shared dishes, such as slow-cooked stuffed duck, regularly appear on the blackboard for two, four or six. They operate a no-reservation policy Monday-Saturday but you can book for their set one-seating Sunday lunch. The same team has since tweaked their winning formula and offers reservations, a similarly affordable gutsy menu, under head chef Tom Norrington-Davis, and a more central location with Great Queen Street in the West End, opposite Holborn’s imposing Masonic temple.

In a similar, if more polished, vein over by London Bridge, Magdalen is a smart two-storey operation with bordello-red walls, simply dressed tables and exposed floorboards operated by a talented young trio who have pooled their enviable collective CVs that include time at the Anchor & Hope, in addition to the considerably fancier Fat Duck and Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons. The low-key ground floor, which doesn't take reservations, offers the same seasonal daily changing menu as the more clubbable and bookable upstairs dining room. The menu which makes use of nearby Borough Market and loves a bit of rare breed, is refined-gutsy in starters the likes of cured sea trout and dill, and fried pig’s head, while shared main courses are typically big bits of meat and game.

Meanwhile there’s a close family connection between St. John and Rochelle Canteen, a Monday to Friday lunchtime operation in hip Shoreditch, housed in what were once bike sheds for a Victorian school; the school itself now operating as studios for designers and artists. In addition to acting as the canteen for nearby arty souls, the Rochelle has also become a destination for some because of the involvement of Margot Henderson, the fearless Kiwi wife of St. John’s Fergus Henderson. In the warmer months there are tables outside in what was the school's playground, as well as in the noisy kitchen shed-cum-canteen. A bring your own booze affair unless you fancy nothing stronger than a ginger beer, the short, daily-changing menu takes a similar nose-to-tail, seasonal British approach as St. John but charges a lot less for dishes such as smoked mackerel, dandelion and horseradish salad or gooseberry fool.

The West London chapter of the school of St. John is the recently opened Hereford Road, which has brought a gutsy no-nonsense style of cooking built around British seasonal ingredients to nearby Notting Hill. Driven by hardworking chef proprietor Tom Pemberton, formerly head chef of St. John Bread & Wine, it's in a once-Victorian butcher’s premises that's been pleasingly redone with an open kitchen, wrought ironwork on the ceiling and leather upholstered loveseats. The daily changing menu delivers everything from whole fish and huge helpings of oxtail to the perfect lemon sorbet.

Market in Camden, is a casual British diner that's a welcome addition to an area where it's traditionally been slim pickings for likeable restaurants. Exposed brick walls, open kitchen and zinc-topped tables work well together in a dining room that's big on buzz. Prices, including the easy to get along with wine list, are reasonable. There's friendly service and from chef Dan Spence, ex of Exmouth Market's Medcalf, the generous portions (the chicken and ham pie is a beast and the jam pudding will keep you warm at night) of fuss-free modern British food - of a style that you shouldn’t be able to screw up but a lot of places still do - are spot on.

Finally over in Islington at The Draper’s Arms, Karl Goward, former St. John head chef, runs the kitchen at this recently re-launched, handsomely sprawling, Edwardian boozer. Its twice-daily changing menu is in a familiarly terse vernacular, its emphasis perhaps more towards game, fish and the lighter, less meaty, side of St. John in dishes such as whole sea bass for two with warm potatoes and pickled samphire.

They’ll be joined late next summer by a third outpost of St. John when Henderson and co. take over what was Manzi’s in the West End to open a hotel and restaurant.

These restaurants that are spreading the no-nonsense, good food gospel according to St. John aren't about celebrity-spotting or Michelin star chasing. But what they lack in glamour and polish they more than make up for by offering the best truly British food in London, great atmosphere and affordability and they do London proud.

Where to eat the best of British in London