IT IS NEARLY 30 years since St John opened in a former smokehouse, simply to the north of the Metropolis of London. Again then, the restaurant felt daringly stark: whitewashed partitions and concrete flooring, drinks specials on chalkboards, a high-ceilinged eating room with white tablecloths and picket chairs, no music. After the pastel-coloured Eighties, it appeared to smack of the mortuary or the working theatre. At present the decor is reassuringly unaltered.
So is the meals. St John’s menu modifications day by day, however its type is fixed—what Fergus Henderson, its co-founder, calls “a form of British cooking”. It turned well-known within the early noughties, when the late Anthony Bourdain, an American chef, creator and tv presenter, rhapsodised over its roast bone marrow salad. That's the solely dish that just about by no means leaves the menu, for good cause: it's a symphony of unctuousness (marrow), brightness (a parsley, caper and shallot salad), salinity (a mound of gray sea salt) and crunch (toast), which the diner composes himself. Marrow and different offal favoured by Mr Henderson started showing on menus of trendy eating places from Seattle to Melbourne.
The offal fad competed with one for molecular gastronomy, with its spheres of olive juice, then gave solution to farm-to-table cooking, which painstakingly detailed the provenance of each radish in a salad. Ultimately got here the narrative-driven cooking of right this moment, wherein every dish has its culturally acceptable origin story. The marrow continues to be on the menu at St John.
But whereas the offal grabs the headlines, Mr Henderson’s form of British cooking finally rests on daring, unfussy simplicity. It's a cold-weather translation of Italian nation cooking, with high-quality meat and greens merely ready. The menu is laconic (“Snails and Oakleaf”), flavours sturdy and balanced, presentation a flourish above plain. Mr Henderson now has Parkinson’s illness and now not cooks, however the restaurant hews to his imaginative and prescient.
In a mercurial business, that's uncommon. Far too many posh metropolitan eating places share a dreary, stylish predictability, supplying the identical gently upbeat music, the identical combination of vaguely Italianate and East Asian dishes, and excessively busy cocktails with poetic or suggestive names. There may be nothing inherently unsuitable with that. Everybody needs to succeed, and these items promote. Castigating restaurateurs for providing them is as foolish as berating administrators for making superhero movies. However whereas predictable eating places and superhero films could be profitable, and generally even good, they can't be actually nice.
Not each singular imaginative and prescient succeeds, or is price pursuing within the first place. Stubbornness and greatness usually are not the identical factor. However—as each would-be novelist turned lawyer or sculptor turned dentist is aware of—such desires are all too straightforward to desert out of worry of failure. And greater than most companies, eating places are inclined to fail. To open one which goes towards the grain is a danger. To seek out that very same restaurant little modified, nonetheless full of diners and nonetheless scrumptious after greater than 1 / 4 of a century is a quiet trigger for pleasure. ■
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