Saint John Restaurant Smithfield, London, UK

I have been lazy lately. I guess because I had too much spare time, I did not find any to update my poor Sardine.

For my defence, my laptop was very capricious and I had to get a brand new pink netbook in order to be able to write again.

A big chunk of my free time has been dedicated to cooking, eating and taking pictures of delicious food. Now it is time to write about it, in order to calm down my followers who have been sending me hundreds of sardine cans to protest...
NOT.

One of my memorable lunch was at Saint John Restaurant. I had already tried their weird menu in Spitalfields and at the bar in Smithfield, but this time I managed to secure a table at the Restaurant in Smithfield for lunch.

For starter I had celeriac soup and snails. Which was an obvious choice because, after all, French people do eat snails, don't they? An Aussie guy asked me after I told him I was French: "So do you eat snails?" "Yes, snails are staple food back home" did I (not) replied. "And you, do you eat a lot of kangaroos?"

Anyway, these snails at Saint John were a good match to the thick celeriac soup.

Celeriac soup and snails

Nothing much to say about the second starter, the name "veal brisket, potato and green sauce" speaks for itself.

Veal brisket, potato and green sauce

I like offal, and whenever I have the opportunity, I order tripe. I have a wonderful memory of an Italian tripe soup I had during a Mangialonga last year in Lugano (a walk in the countryside with ten stops to sample the local food and wine) and I quite like the Vietnamese pho with tripe at Song Que. However I was quite disappointed by the bland taste of the tripe I had at Saint John.

Tripe, bacon and carrots

The pigeon did not look better than the tripe dish but tasted much better. Pigeon is such a delicate meat, I can hardly believe it is the cousin of these obese flying rats which always want to have a share of my peanuts when I am having a drink al fresco.

Pigeon and turnip

Our desserts were very very sweet, I loved the honeycomb ice cream, full of caramel and nougatine. The chocolate terrine was too dense for my taste.

Honey comb ice cream

Chocolate terrine & Milk toffee ice cream

We had a great time at Saint John Restaurant Smithfield, and a excellent bottle of wine which name I do not remember. I am however surprised that Saint John Restaurant is the third best restaurant in the UK according to the S. Pellegrino World Best Restaurant ranking because I would rank several other restaurants higher than Saint John, which is great for British cuisine, but is certainly not suitable to everyone's taste.

Cost:

Starter: £7, Main: £17, Dessert: £7

An advice: book several days ahead and have a pear cider while waiting for your table