St John Bread & Wine

What an amazing dinner – I think we worked our way through most of the menu, all of which was amazing. This is not somewhere for the squeamish/faint hearted, as a lot of it is offal related, but the taste is out of this world, the wine list good and service excellent. The Madelines for pudding were out of this world! Would absolutely go again but it is pretty expensive, especially the wine.

We went on Saturday afternoon. Having never been to St John restaurant I thought it would be a good starter experience to try St John Bread and Wine.

The place was packed and we were told as soon as we asked for a table that there might be a wait for the food but we didn't mind.

Perhaps the service has been bad in the past (judging by the reviews on here) but we had a super waitress, who immediately asked if we needed some water (the amount of restaurants that this doesn't happen in is extraordinary and I would pretty much have given a 9 for this!) she talked us through the process and was really helpful when we asked her about the wine. We ordered an aperitif from the board on her recommendation – a Pineau de Charentes – which was super. She even came back to ask what we thought of it.

The food was good, English style tapas, and we ordered five plates between the 2 of us. Enormous hunks of bread kept us occupied as we waited. The food arrived bit by bit, but that is part of the relaxed dining experience and it suited us perfectly. The venison and pickled walnuts were great, the crispy pork skin not as crispy as you might wnat but the dressing was delicious.

Atmosphere was great – buzzy, busy and quite different. It is quite minimal but we thought it worked very well, although prices were a little on the high side.

On the down side the loos do seem to be rather self conciously grotty, peeling surfaces and horrid flooring paired with Cowshed handwash – but I think that rather sums up the St John ethos.

We really enjoyed it and a trip to St John (when we're feeling slightly more flush) is definitely on the cards.

I had a lunch here recently and have to say I left the place feeling depressed having spent £40 on dishes that were just awful and a wine that had such a mark-up on it it felt like theft! The mashed potatoe with egg and fried chicken skin sounded different and appealing but it actually turned mine and my colleagues stomach. It was served tepid, the mash was drowned in the water from the egg and it was inedible… the spinanch and lamb with anchovy dressing only tasted of anchovy and being a cold dish made for it as a rather repulsive dish… the place is cold and despite having lots of windows and white walls it is actually quite dark, I got the feeling they were saving on both heat and electric bills… as for the staff, well they barely grunt at you and despite the place being half empty our first plate of food arrived almost 30 minutes after we ordered…This place is not worth it, I cannot understand why people have recommended it… simply AWFUL!

4 of us went for Sunday lunch, being my wife 25 year old daughter and her boyfriend.

The place was full and we enjoyed the buzz of the place – the dining area, very plainly decorated, is fairly small so quite noisy when full which was fun for a ‘chatty’ sunday lunch.

We really liked the fact that you could approach the meal rather like english tapas i.e we choose 6-7 dishes of the starters menu and shared – it worked very well and the food was all good and tasty – incidentally the choice of main courses is very limited so this is not a place for a more formal occasion if that is what you want.

The wine list is Ok – not cheap overall although they had a couple of binends on the board and i chose a red burgundy from there.

Considering all the postives above, I was disappointed with the service – it took some waving to get someone to take our wine order and then replenish wine and water later – service of the food itself is ok. I think they could do with one more member of staff just making sure everyone has got what they want to drink and fast – actually they would probably sell more if they did. Having said that we did finaly manage to get 3 bottles of wine delivered and much enjoyed between 4! Hic!

Price, all up, was just over £200 inc service for 4, with £90 of that being the wine!

Having been taken to the original St John's for snday lunch a month or so ago my wife and I feel that we enjoyed this restaurant better – the food, atmosphere, decor and pricing all seems to work better than at the more ‘formal’, relatively, original.

Definitely will go again for Sunday lunch!

fergus is a hero to me, he's always been. i've been to st john restaurant 3 times, always coming from italy just for gourmet weekends in the uk.
now my high opinion on him as a chef-patron has been heavily stroke.

yesterday i called st john bred and wine and asked if there was any sunday brunch, and asked for a 4 people table starting from 10.30: they took the reservation.
when there today the menu was only ham toast, porridge and plums, yogurt and stewed apples. we ordered all, plus apple juice, coffee and water. it was 10,55 when i asked for cider, but the waitress refused to serve it because “we serve alchool from 11”. so i waited 5 minutes, asked it again and obtained it. after 15 minutes they changed the menu turning into the proper brunch menu – and i got really pissed because nobody told us there would have been a change of menu in 30 minutes. we were very interested in trying the mackarel and ghe sardines, but never managed to order them as all the people working in the restaurant sat at a long table beside us and started eating THEIR brunch – that actually looked beautifull – and drinking coca cola in big plastic bottles.

the most depressing restaurant/café experience in uk ever.
surely won't do it again. uk is full of beatyfull traditional pubs, butchers and markets where to eat old style simple food: realizing this was the only good aspect of the day.

Myself and two colleagues went to this restaurant on a friends recommendation. It was early evening (7pm) midweek. My first impression was that the layout of the dining area resembled a school assembly hall with no areas of privacy available. When the menu arrived I was unpleasently surprised at the lack of variety. There were only three “main” courses to choose from as follows:-
a) “Succulent Kid” (Goat) b) “Mallard” (Duck) c) a fish dish.
When we received our menus we were immediately steered away from the fish dish by the waitress who said it would take at least an hour to prepare (fish????…I don't think so) anyway this reduced the selection by 33%.
My colleagyes both ordered the goat, I ordered the duck…the waitress came back from the kitchen almost immediately to say the duck would take at least 40 minutes to prepare…(hmm…whats going on here??)…OK, three goats it is then.
The three goat meals arrived fairly promptly and amounted to two small medallions of ‘meat’ leaning against a couple of pieces/stalks of “Brock” with a sauce…and nothing else…oh apart from the blood from the (very) rare “meat”.
We ate our meals washed down with a half a pint of pilsner lager each (eqivalent to £7 a pint).
In summary, I found the food pretentious, poor quality, lacking flavour and the portion sizes were ridiculously inadequate for the £15.90 (yes fifteen ponds and ninety pence) price tag.
I can honestly say that this is the worst meal that I have ever been served in a restaurent.
On a positive note, customers are served bread and butter (two thick slices) per person before the main course. This bread is absolutely delicious, it is grainy, and although thick has a light fresh texture and a nutty flavour, highly recommended. This on its own however was not enough to out weigh the pretentious and overpriced menu.
Finally, one of my colleagues paid for the three of us with his credit card and opted not to include a tip, the waitress at that point ‘cut him dead’ with her attitude (body language).