St. Johns, Haute Slaughterhouse in London

St. Johns --- Haute Slaughterhouse

There are some restaurants that change the culinary landscape: gastronomic earthquakes. Chez Penisse, Union Square Café, El Bulli and The American Place are some that come to mind. St. John, set near London’s Smithfield Market, is another. Chef Fergus Henderson believes in using the animal from head to end, as he describes in his respected 2004 cookbook The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating. Chef Henderson is fighting a wasting ailment, and will probably never stand behind a stove, but his influence is profound.

St. John eschews the fancy for the solid, the dramatic for the solid. While this style of cuisine has been termed Haute Barnyard, I think of it as Haute Slaughterhouse. It is less the product of the farm than of the butcher. The menu my evening included salted pig’s liver, kid, and chitterlings, but also such rarely served seafood as brill, and pollock. The dining room is ostentatiously simple, more like a nineteenth century workers’ mess, along the lines of Peter Luger. And prices are modest by London standards (my four courses were about 40 pounds).

My starter was a single gull’s egg with celery salt. I had some idea that this might be an egg of special flavor, but, despite a spotted shell and startling orange yolk, eaten blindfold this had the taste much like any hardboiled egg.





The appetizer, a signature dish for Chef Henderson was Roasted Bone Marrow – four rough cut bones – with their marrow intact, served with Grilled Toast, Sea Salt, and Parsley Salad with Capers and Onions. This was carnally sublime and the recognition that marrow is moral deservedly helped to catapult St. Johns into the influential establishment that it is. St. John’s food is neither complex or fussy, what makes this work so well is that Henderson takes what has not be considered to be restaurant food, and prove its delights. The addition of the parsley salad matched the marrow, both in its lushness and in that it overturns the belief that parsley is not a suitable focus for high end dining. A remarkable appetizer.



I chose Veal’s Tongue with Beetroot as my main course. The plate was almost audacious in its simplicity. I was presented with two pieces of veal tongue, baked and fried, and some plain beets. Yet, the modesty of the tongue, a most remarkably tender cut with the slightest taste of cured beef tongue, proved that this is no parlor trick. The beet matched the tongue without being elaborated in any way.



As dessert I selected St. John’s treatment of an Eccles Cake, served with a slice of Lancaster cheese. The cheese was perfectly vibrant, but the Eccles cake, filled with a think and dense layer of raisins, was more of a pastry than a dessert, strictly speaking, and might have been more appealing had it been served warm with a scoop of, say, rum raisin ice cream.



St. Johns plainspeak is distant from the elegance of Gordon Ramsay where I ate lunch, and yet it is perhaps a measure of the influence of the former on the latter than my lunch included pied au cochon and duck gizzard. While we have not seen a large influence of haute slaughterhouse cuisine on the American shores – and it may take awhile to penetrate, given Yankee squeamishness towards offal – in time we will be consuming veal tongue, unless moral politics intervenes.

St. John
26 St. John Street
London (Smithfield Market)
020-7251-0848
www.stjohnrestaurant.com

Vealcheeks

St. John's was easily the best meal I had in London a couple of years ago, the marrow bones are incredible - I still salivate at the memory. On top of that it's an excellent value in an insanely expensive restaurant city.

As a university student in the UK in the late 90's I had read a cookbook review of Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking in the Guardian. I have always been an intrepid eater- a lover of liver sausage as a wee child- so this idea of guts as high cuisine deeply fascinated me. Fergus Henderson, his book, and St. John restaurant impressed me with the seemingly radical-at-the-time ethos of sparing no scrap of the animal. I still have yet to actually own the cookbook, but the seed of this type of finessed economy in cooking remained sowed in me as I shortly began my professional cooking career. I never made it to St. John either, in those days the extent of eating out meant late night kabobs after a night at the pub.

So, back in London after nearly a decade, my one major eating goal was clear, to make good on the resounding, if indirect, influence Fergus Henderson has had on my approach to eating and cooking (and clearly the recent craze of chacuterie, offal chic, and all things anglo/gastro in American dining). So I paid a visit to St. John for lunch.

The space is minimal, functional to the point of near institutional, but graced with lovely lighting. We entered through the bar/bakery area which has wonderful vaulted skylights. Here is a view of that space:


The problem with such a highly anticipated, perhaps rarified experience is getting it right. Add the inevitable fact that I would covet everything that I would not get the chance to try no matter what. I knew my limitations going in- there were only two of us and one of us, while game for most culinary experiences, is not into organ meats (except sweetbreads). The appetizer list presented some challenges then- out were the rolled pig spleen and duck hearts. She doesn't like marrow either, so I made the executive decision that we would just order our own plates and share bites if interested. It seemed the obvious choice to order Anthony Bourdain's Death Row meal and flagship dish of St. John:

Roasted Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad

The simplicity and sum-of-its parts balancing of this dish is unarguable- crisp smoky bread, unctuous marrow, bright and tart parsley salad, and minerally sea salt. I should plug their bread here too, not only was this grilled toast perfect, the bread service was equally delightful. All said, I have a confession to make- is it odd that I don't love the marrow? I mean, with a stew or a roast, a little jewel of greasy stuff is a treat, but as far as animal fat goes I'd take a smear of schmaltz or lardo anyday. Is it the iron-y offal tang? To me it mostly just tastes of tallow with a slightly snotty texture. Alright I'll quit this heretical talk. Unlike my last really overwhelming Flinstone-like portion of marrow bones at Minetta Tavern, this dish was dainty. It really was a wonderful composition.

My girlfriend ordered an app. from the daily specials:
Braised Octopus with Potato and Rocket

A nice dish. They had sheared the suckers from the tendrils and interspersed them in the dish, which was challenging to one of us. She also found the dish incredibly fishy, though not from the octopus itself, the dressing was fortified with anchovy. I liked that and thought it stood up well to the bitterness of the rocket.

I had never tried (and always wanted to try) Welsh Rarebit and assumed this would be a great version, so we got one to share.
Welsh Rarebit

A brilliant piece of cheesy toast with a serious sharp bite to the cheddar. Toast was crisped up and somewhat eggy. The server brought out a comically large bottle of Lea & Perrins as a condiment.

The mains presented even tougher choices. The trend was toward local game and fish rather than offal. At the bottom of the menu there was actually a warning about "lead shot" in the game dishes. There was actually only one dish of the "big four" animal proteins (chicken, beef, pork, lamb)- in this case pork, a chop of heirloom Middlewhite that the server explained had a good inch of fat around it. Tough choice #1. A dish of tripe and chips also appealed, though the daily prep. for the tripe was deep fried which sounded like too much of a good thing to me. Fish seemed a little everyday for this experience. Pheasant and trotter pie for two sounded nice, but my girlfriend was shying away from the thought of pig feet.

She ordered Crumbed Veal with Anchovy and Chicory

Nice schnitzel-like cutlets, great with a twist of lemon and further balanced by the acidic dressing of the wilted chicory that contained the anchovy. A huge portion and the easiest going of the dishes that day (next to the rarebit actually).

My entree choice was narrowed down to two gamebirds. And believe it or not, this decision proved to be my one ethical/constitutional food dilemma of the meal (and actually of recent memory). Aside from being a food obsessive, I am an avid bird watcher. One of my favorite birding moments is witnessing the mating dance of the woodcock (actually spying a solitary woodcock is also a pretty thrilling discovery). So right there on the top of St. John's entree menu was a single noun- free of descriptors- Woodcock. Our hulk of a server fervently described to me the dish: "we serve the whole bird, split the head open and everything. You can scoop out the brain and eat it if you like. We yank out the guts ands saute them, which you eat on toast..." My poor little woodcock, flayed open and subjected to unspeakable acts in the name of cuisine. Perhaps I am not cut out for the hunter part of the hunter/gatherer trip. Give me some good old fashioned agriculturally raised animals, not such a dazzling sight in their cod chewing domesticity. I couldn't wuss out entirely though, so I went with wigeon duck and beets.

Wigeon and Beets

A murderous looking plate indeed. The beets were righteous, cooked down with onions and their greens in a savory stock. The server had warned that the duck tasted "quite fishy". He wasn't kidding, it had an upfront minerally, gamy flavor which I expected, but the aftertaste was of pond, like a freshwater fish pulled from the murky depths of still water. It got me thinking about some research I had done about the Medieval diet and how in those days folks would fudge a little bit in their zoological taxonomy to skirt around no meat at Lent restrictions. Wild ducks were considered fish (as were beavers) as to round out the Lenten dinner table. The fishy dark meat had nicely crisp caramelized skin and its flavors matched well with the robust beets. Intense as it was, I made it to the clean plate club:


And after all this we deserved pudding. The Ecceles cake with cheese pictured upthread had been recommended, though we went with something we both new we loved, Treacle tart.

Treacle Tart with Jersey Cream

A wonderfully sticky pie with a deeply caramelized crust, an over-the-top bite with dabs of that buttery cream. Our palettes had been on a joyride and were able to wind down with some sweet, buttery love.

All in all, this was one hell of an experience. It is rare that I am so challenged by cuisine. As provocative as some of it seemed though, this food is prepared with a subtle touch, with the ingredients front and center. Every dish consisted of only a few ingredients each. It is clear to me how this devout respect for food sources has shaped the culinary landscape of the past few decades.

Thanks for the report. Looks terrific. My kind of food.

"Parts is parts!"

Ate at St. John AND St. John Bread & Wine last week. I actually preferred the latter. I think because they encourage sharing and so it's easy to get a bunch of dishes and try many things. It was awkward to share at the original St. John and I got full really quickly from the portions. I also thought the Bread & Wine dishes were more complex. And I saw Fergus Henderson himself there!

Some favs:



Crispy pig skin with tarragon sauce



Duck hearts, crispy potato cake, aioli, watercress. By far my favorite.



The runner up which was this foie + duck pate toast. But how can you go wrong with that?

Super eats! Neat place! We went there close to Christmas and there were several large tables of mates, obviously office groups, feasting on the whole roast pig. Every time the waiters would bring one of the pigs into the room, hoisted high over their head on a large platter, the whole room would burst into huzzahs. I soooo lusted for that piggie, but had luscious duck instead. The Other Dr. Gale had razor clams, our first time for them, and we found them simply the best clams we'd ever had in our lives. Sure wish we could find them around here.

Tnx for the report, it brought back memories!

Geo
PS. I was going to suggest that you visit the art gallery in Glasgow, but forgot to mention it. Sorry.

Ah, brings back memories of the razor clam and pork belly dish that Chris Cosentino served at The Publican. I think that was last year, but I guess they are hard to find or something because I do hardly see them.