Bread & Wine

St John Bread & Wine, Spitalfields, London, E1 6LZ

Been wanting to visit here for ages after being a fan of Fergus Henderson's brilliant book 'Nose to Tail Eating' which a veritable bible on quality british food, so coming here for lunch on at Saturday was a real treat. We had to have an early lunch due to planned train journeys so were in here at midday and we're practically only people in here for first half hour, but it started to slowly fill up after that. The lunch menu is almost like British tapas so we decided to pick few things each and share the lot, the menu changes extremely regularly so definitely a place worth visiting a couple of times and I'm trying to plan my next visit already unless I'm feeling even more frivolous and decide to go to the flag ship restaurant instead.

Rock Oysters

Super fresh, super gorgeous... bliss

Nettles Soup

Rich and creamy, was a very nice soup but didn't strike me as particularly nettle like but it was nice just bit normal.

Faggot

What cuts went into the faggot I don't know but it was traditionally made being held together by the caul fat and the meat produced so many juices that it became a fatty sauce, looking back this much have been demolished in 2 minutes flat.

Mussels

The only disappointment really, the mussels hadn't been soaked long enough and were quite gritty, the waitress apologised when this was mentioned and when the bill came this had been removed without any fuss whatsoever, in fact they were extremely apologetic about it

Stinking Bishop & Potatoes

Such a good cheese that served as simply as this; just with new potatoes really let it's quality stand out. Simple yet complex - almost a mantra for St John's I suppose.

Ox Heart Salad

Slices of the heart were mixed in with fresh crispy watercress and a wonderfully rich balsamic dressing. Even the watercress-hater amongst us enjoyed this, the heart just melted in your mouth (or should that be melted your heart?)

Eccles Cake & Lancashire Cheese

So good to see proper Lancashire cheese and this was so good it provided all the moisture of a sauce to compliment the densest of eccles cakes I've ever seen, a homely treat for the taste buds but one hell of a workout for the jaw muscles.

Baked Vanilla Cheesecake

There is a long running argument/debate whether you chill or bake a cheesecake and I think that the fact dishes like specify they are baked shows this isn't the expected way. But I'll concede that baked cheesecakes are very good and this didn't disappoint, rich and creamy with excellent quality vanilla flavour this was fitting end to meal.

To drink we went with the house white, which at twenty quid wasn't cheap but can't complain about the quality of it, really crisp and refreshing and good to see you can pop in here for a bottle to take home for a decent price - in fact there was quite a steady stream of people dropping in just to pick up a loaf of one of the artisan breads which were as good as you'd expect. Very good place and just makes me wanna go to Smithfield restaurant more.

View Tales of the Undigested in a larger map