Pilgrimage of another sort, to St. John, where it (for a different value of it than above) all started. Possibly the most enjoyable meal on the trip. Eating here, you know that this man’s guts and uncompromising idea of what food should be have made it possible for a new generation of cooks to put liver and tripe on the table, and the world is a better place for it. While it’s no longer a shock to see a restaurant serving blood cake, its presentation here, just a slab of blood and two runny eggs, amidst the whitewash and stern waitstaff, remains fresh and of interest because nowhere else is it done so simply and so matter of factly. And it takes a certain sort of genius to serve four appetizers dressed with the same green sauce, and have each one achieve a completely different balance. Go with a crowd, and share everything, especially dessert. Highlights, on this trip, included broad beans and berkswell, cold kid and salad; duck’s hearts; peas, tripe and ham; roast pigeon; a huge slab of calf’s liver; crisped chitterlings; blood cake and eggs; ginger loaf; Eccles Cake and Lancashire; and rhubarb jelly - which was nearly everything we ordered, really.

It seems like everywhere else we ate on the trip was descended, in spirit if not in fact, from St. John - and it’s a measure of how much we owe Fergus Henderson that these were the best meals of the trip.

Two very good places to eat in London are The Harwood Arms in Fulham and Arbutus in Soho. The former is a beautiful gastropub, with supremely fresh cask ale and Addlestone’s cloudy cider on tap - a cider like no other we’ve had, rich, dry, and absolutely belgian-ale bretty. Superb brown bread. Smoked salmon, potted rabbit, very clean braised lamb shank (with a panko crust better than any other version we’ve had), mild venison with a couple of variations on horseradish/beetroot, salmon and lovage, roast pigeon, and lovely puddings - rhubarb jelly with custard and blood orange sorbet, a strong, tannic earl grey ice cream, eggless and beautifully clean. The latter is a swanky looking restaurant with some very swanky trappings, which turns out to serve things like pieds et paquets (lamb tripe stuffed with lamb’s trotter, braised) - in exceedingly expensive copper pots. A good wine list. Bloody brilliant smoked eel, a mackerel and squid burger that’s unlike anything we’ve ever had, the above-mentioned p&p, sweet and earthy, and a rabbit that really tasted, to our great delight, like rabbit. Apparently you have to go to France to find such creatures.

2 comments so far

"Eating in London, 2 of 3" was written on 26 May 2009 and filed in General