St. Barts

Secreted within the reticulations of a glitzy development between Smithfield and the medieval church of St Bartholomew the Great, the restaurant named in his honour is a labour of sustainable and ecologically conscious love from the team that created Nest (formerly of Hackney, now in Shoreditch). Johnnie Crowe is executive chef, and has established a format to enliven an area of the City that tends to deflate after business hours. The dining room has the spacious feel of a repurposed showroom, with plate glass views of the church. Seats are upholstered in deep fleece, and the atmosphere is one of leisurely progress through a multi-stage tasting menu (10 courses at dinner, including the canapés), which is payable upfront. When we visited, the seafood hits just kept on coming: langoustine flamed with green serrano chilli; an ingenious shredding of cuttlefish (to resemble noodles) piled into a squid-ink broth and topped with caviar; potted white crab warmly seasoned with Sussex ginger on a bed of soft brown-crab custard. Everything is British, so there is no importing of such fripperies as lemons or chocolate. Instead, contemplate the savoury beauty of a piece of grain-crusted veal sweetbread in a glossy stock reduction split with burnt butter, made gentle with a Halloween-orange purée of autumn squash. Our main event was grouse shot in Yorkshire, the crown pristinely roasted in juniper twigs, served with preserved plum and pickled loganberry. It was heralded by a serving of the offal (liver and heart prominent) in a porridge of roasted barley. Red kuri pumpkin provided a refreshingly icy pre-dessert, before the clever stand-in for chocolate – a toffee-ish, coffee-ish splodge of black koji (the stuff that starts sake fermenting) with pure milk ice cream. The wine pairing is worth a punt (£100 in the evening), but be aware that a couple of the selections are expected to do two dishes. Not every match is spot-on, although maître d'/sommelier Luke Wasserman gives excellent vinous bants.

High quality cooking

Restaurant St Barts was opened in 2022 by long-time collaborators Johnnie Crowe, Luke Wasserman and Toby Neill, the team behind Nest and later Fenn. Conceived as a more ambitious and higher-end project than their previous restaurants, it brought the trio to Clerkenwell, close to the former Smithfield Market and overlooking St Bartholomew the Great church. Crowe oversees the kitchen, with the restaurant built around a tasting menu format focused on British produce and small-scale suppliers from across the UK. The food centres on seasonal ingredients sourced from farmers, growers and conservationists across the British Isles. Dinner begins in the restaurant's bar area before guests move into the main dining room for a multi-course tasting menu typically between two and three hours long, with a shorter one-hour lunch menu available during the week. The cooking is positioned around refined British dishes that place an emphasis on sourcing, seasonality and ingredient provenance. Sustainability also informs the interiors, with furniture made from fallen London plane trees by local woodworker Archie Faber. Bespoke tableware is produced in-house by co-founder Luke Wasserman alongside ceramicists including Adrian Gonzales, whose work draws inspiration from the British coastline.