The bar area where your experience begins
What do we need to know about Restaurant St Barts?
This is the latest opening from the team who brought us NEST in Hackney followed by FENN in Fulham. For this opening, they've ditched the all-caps letters along with their more casual, neighbourhood fare and opted for quite a different kind of experience.
Different how exactly?
Crucially this is a tasting menu-only restaurant. At lunch, the menu is six courses and dinner expands that to fifteen. The kitchen team led by executive head chef Johnnie Crowe have set a challenge for themselves to ensure that every dish champions the best British produce. And to that end, no dish will use more than two key ingredients to achieve that goal. As for how long it all takes? They advise you to leave at least 90 minutes for lunch and three hours for dinner.
Where is it?
You'll find it tucked down Bartholemew Close, in Smithfield. It's in a brand new building sandwiched in between some of London's oldest. The dining room courtyard, for example, has gorgeous views over the cloisters of the 12th-century church of St Bartholemew The Great (hence the restaurant's name). It also looks through to what's officially the oldest house in the City of London on Cloth Fair and the only private residence in the City to have survived the Great Fire of London.
To get to the restaurant, you could take the tube to either Farringdon or Barbican - both are equally handy.
Where should we meet friends for a drink first?
Handily there's a brand new wine bar - 56 Smithfield - which has just opened its doors around the corner. And very soon you'll have the reopened Three Compasses in Farringdon to pop into too.
So what's the set-up here?
Think of this as a promenade meal. So the action begins in the bar where drinks and the first part of the menu is brought to you in a series of snacks. If you're going with the wine pairing (which we'd very much recommend) then there's time to get a cocktail in before the pairing gets going mid-way.
From the first seven courses, our personal favourites included an East End seafood cocktail served in an oyster shell, along with a heavenly Golden Cross cheese and onion tart.
The snacks served in the bar. Top (left to right - home mangalitza cures, cobnut hobnob and duck liver, East End seafood cocktail and cod fritters. Bottom (left to right) - Golden Cross and onion tart, offal and cures kebab and wagyu tartare.
The dining room looking on to the open kitchen
Once the procession of snacks ends, you're brought through into the dining room - a huge open space with an open wood-fired kitchen at one end. Here is where the meal gets going in earnest. Without wanting to give too much away (even though we expect the menu to change regularly) here are some of the highlights we enjoyed in the dining room.
Isle of Wight tomatoes with garlic - a dish composed entirely of produce from the Isle of Wight with a panoply of textures and a savoury set custard base.
Cod & Preserved Funghi - Cornish cod loin poached in mushroom stock, served with black mushroom puree, mushroom butter, pickled truffles and truffled milk bread
Duck with berries - dry aged Goosnargh duck breast cooked over fire and lightly smoked. The duck skin is glazed with fermented berry sauce and it's served with pickled berry compote & duck fat jus.
Hackney honey and lavender dessert
There's also a going-away gift - a little beer-glazed bun that comes with instructions for warming up for your breakfast the next day (if it lasts that long).
What about drink?
We'd very much recommend starting with one of the cocktails, if you can. We also opted for the drinks pairing which is £80 at dinner and £60 at lunchtime. We say drinks rather than wine, as there's a cheeky English cider match with the optional cheese plate. The wine list focuses on low intervention choices selected by the restaurant's co-founder Luke Wasserman and head of wine Emma Denney and we particularly enjoyed our glass of sparkling at the beginning by Oxfordshire winery Hundred Hills.
The barrel-aged negroni was very much on point, but the real standout was the St Barts Martini made with pickled sea fennel flowers. Both £14.
Overall thoughts
On aesthetics alone, this new restaurant hits all the right notes. "Looks like Noma in the heart of London" said one fan on Instagram. We also really enjoy the promenade approach, where the experience begins in the bar before moving onto more formal dining in the main restaurant. There really hasn't been anything quite like this in London for a while - you are definitely going to want to check it out.
More about Restaurant St Barts
Where is it? 63 Bartholomew Cl, London EC1A 7BG
How to book: book online
Find out more: Visit their website or follow them on Instagram @restaurantstbarts.
Hot Dinners dined as guests of the restaurant. Prices correct at time of publication.
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