St John's - Review

Intro
St John's - Highly Recommended
26 St. John St
London, EC1M 4AY
Phone: 020 72510848

Declared by Anthony Bourdain as his favorite restaurant on Earth, I had incredibly high expectations of this place. Like most foodies, I dig the quinta quarta or the fifth cut of meat, the offal, the good stuff. This place does the quinta quarta up right, but it's quite odd. White table cloths and waiters rocking their starched whites, but all the apps I was eating with my fingers which I dig doing. Just felt odd doing it in the nicer setting. Overall, I give the restaurant an 86/100.

Our Menu
1) Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad ***
2) Rolled Pig's Spleen and Bacon **
3) Langostine with Mayonnaise (special) **
4) Tripe, Carrots, and Bacon **
5) Grilled Ox Heart and Courgettes *
6) Greens **

Rating System
--- What the F - in a bad way * Good ** Great *** What the F – in a good way

Dish Comments
1) I've had tons of bone marrow in my day, but I've never had a topping of parsley, caper, and shallots before. Definite a wtf moment. The parsley, caper, and shallots adds such a nice brightness and balance to the rich bone marrow. Great f'n stuff. Plus it was fun to play with this medieval torture device that you use to extract the bone marrow...
2) The pig spleen was creamy and had a liver like flavor. Balances well with fatty flavorful bacon...unsmoked I believe. Great, great stuff. Again, the ever presence of the high note (vinegary, tart stuff) with the cornichons, pickled red onions, and side of red vinegar in a bowl. Helps cut the rich food which I dug a lot.
3) Perfectly cooked langostine. Sweet, firm, and very flavorful. Spicy mayonnaise adds extra body to the light langostine. Wished the shrimp brains were more flavorful though.
4) The tripe was tasty, but not great at first. I was so digging the Mexican style tripe (crispy, tender, flavorful), but St John's version eventually won me over. Tender, fatty, and great with bacon. Sweet carrots matched perfectly with the dish.
5) Ox heart had huge, huge beefy flavor. The sweet courgettes (zucchinis) was a perfect balance to the meat.
6) Although the greens didn't look like much, they tasted fantastic - similar to a kale, but more tender. I believe the veg were lightly boiled and finished with a tiny bit of butter. May need to try this next time I cook up some leafy veggies.

Overall Restaurant Experience (86/100)

• Food 8.6/10 – Not the best restaurant experience I've ever had, but the food is pretty fun to eat. I loved how the main ingredient always stood out, but was perfectly accompanied by something else - like the acidic notes or the sweet notes.
• Service 7.5/10 – Average service and it did take a while for the servers to get to us. Food came out at a solid pace though. Server was nice though.
  
• Atmosphere 8.0/10 – White tablecloths, but get to eat with your hands. Weird at first, but I kinda dug it. The surrounding atmosphere though is just white brick walls - kinda like a beer hall, but everything is white. Crowd consisted of couples young and old and also a bunch of large groups. At 6:30 on a Saturday the place was empty, but around 7:30 it was packed. We had reservations and were seated immediately, but if you have to wait there's a bar right outside.
  
• Price 8.5/10 – Great deal for the happiness factor. Entrees were around 15 pounds - about 70 pounds total for the two of us which included a couple of drinks.
  

Closing Comments
Really fun place although not the best place for offal - Italy and Mexico still have a special place in my heart for the nasty bits...pun intended. Next time I'm back in London I need to go back with more people, since you can order a whole roasted pig which looked spectacular. Side note - the traditional English brew is bitters, but after rocking the Dogfish bitters are really quite bland. Not that hoppy and a little bit weird as it's not really very cold.