Does St John deserve the hype?

When the World’s top 50 restaurants are published each year St John is always near the top of the list. This year it’s number 14 but is it really the fourteenth best restaurant in the world?

The idea of course is as absurd as the idea that the River Caf is the world's best Italian restaurant as was proclaimed a few years ago. But the list is drawn up, so far as I understand, by chefs and critics who naturally want to be seen endorsing places their peers respect. Like Ferran Adria and Heston Blumenthal, St John's chef-patron Fergus Henderson has become an icon - and is also a very good bloke. The judges know their judgement won’t be questioned if they nominate it so it always gets a huge number of votes.

I hadn’t been for a couple of years but my past experiences have been mixed. I remember having some of the best roast pork I’ve ever tasted and also some of the toughest, bloodiest, most undercooked partridge.

On this occasion I took my son, a restaurateur himself, who’d never been before. It has to be said we’re a picky pair always analysing every aspect of a meal but if you judge St John from the more normal point of view of someone eating there for the very first time - perhaps for a special occasion on account of its reputation - you can’t help but feel they might be asking themselves what the fuss is about.

Two dishes exemplified that particularly: a mismatched starter salad of brown shrimps and shredded cabbage in which the flavour of the cabbage totally overwhelmed the delicate flavour of the shrimps and a slightly leaden dessert of parsnip cake and sliced oranges (note to self: parsnip doesn't work as well as carrot or beetroot in cake). My boy's main of snails, sausage and chickpeas looked like a student supper and was just a bit dull.

On the credit side I had a warm salad of mussels, leeks and celeriac (above) which was absolutely lovely - fresh and seasonal - followed by a perfectly cooked slab of roast beef, with beetroot and horseradish (though both it and the plate it was served on could have been warmer) accompanied by - sheer genius - a side order of perfectly seasoned Welsh rarebit, the highlight of our meal. And even with the boom in artisanal baking over the last few years the sourdough bread is still the best in London.

The all-French wine list is also very much to my taste though we drank modestly (a couple of glasses ofchampagne, and a glass of Domaine Olivier Pithon,'Mon P'tit Pithon' Vin de Pays des Cotes Catalanes 2008 which rubbed along fine with the beef).

The unevenness in the cooking, it strikes me, stems from St John’s - maybe Henderson’s - constant desire to create new dishes which sometimes overwhelms basic good sense. You always see dishes on the menu you don’t find elsewhere and that’s a virtue but sometimes they strive too much for effect. In the 15 years since it opened St John has always been an innovator - from its pared down, white-painted warehouse decor, the bone marrow, the offal, the homely nursery puddings, the feasting menus - all trends picked up by other restaurants (as I suspect the rarebit will be).

The problem is that the accolade of being 14th best restaurant in the world creates expectations that it’s almost impossible for any restaurant to fulfil so don’t go with the idea that you’ll have one of the technically dazzling meals you’ve ever had in your life and you won't be disappointed. What you will unfailingly have is a fascinating experience that pushes the boundaries of what restaurants can offer. Everyone who's interested in food should eat here at least once.

St John is at 26 St John Street, London EC1M 4AY. Tel: 020 7251 0848 (email: reservations@stjohnrestaurant.com)

Alle Testiere - best restaurant in Venice or most over-hyped?

Of all the restaurants we had lined up to visit on our current trip to Venice Alle Testiere was the one I was most looking forward to. The guides praise it lavishly. One of my colleagues said we must on no account miss it, that the kitchen would send out a succession of wonderful dishes, that the food was the best in Venice by far.

Well, it may have been at one stage - and may still be for the favoured regulars who frequent this tiny 20 seater - but if you walk in as a ordinary member of the public I’m afraid it’s a different story.

The evening started on a bad note when we arrived, 10 minutes late admittedly, (it’s hard to find) but we had confirmed our reservation earlier in the day. ‘Wait here’ our waiter said casually, leaving us by the door despite the fact that a table for two was free. We waited for about 7 or 8 minutes while they completely ignored us then finally a couple left and we were seated.

The menu is short and fairly expensive. A couple of dishes were off but, fair enough, it was the second sitting on a Saturday evening. Our starters - a dish of scallops and a shrimp and asparagus salad arrived within minutes (no more than four) of our ordering them. The scallops which appeared to have been baked in the shell with white wine and dill tasted as if they had been reheated. They were soft and flabby, overwhelmed by the taste of dill and an accompanying cherry tomato. And three small scallops for 17€ is mean even by London standards. The shrimp salad was just plain dull. It could have been served by any halfway competent restaurant.

My husband who wasn’t feeling particularly hungry had the spaghetti with tellines (little clams) which again was bland - we had better for less than half the price in a cheap trat the other day. But my main course of scampi in a sweet and sour tomato and cinnamon sauce (25€) was a disgrace, again overcooked (the consistency of the scampi was soft and woolly), the clumsily seasoned sauce completely overwhelming their characteristic sweetness.

If this had been any other restaurant we’d have left at that point but I was just so dumbfounded I had to see if they could do any better with the contorni and ordered a side dish of grilled vegetables (aubergine, courgettes, treviso and artichoke). This at least came freshly cooked though scattered lavishly with seasalt crystals which made it unpleasantly salty. Then we shared (hallelujah!) an exemplary tiramisu.

The well-priced wine list was also great with several interesting choices by the glass although the Drius Pinot Bianco (from Friuli) they poured was corked. Our charmless waitress replaced it with ill grace, eyes heavenwards as if we hadn’t the faintest idea what we were talking about. The second glass and the intriguingly complex Milleuve Bianco 2005 from Nicola Manferrari (also a Friuli wine) were excellent - as was the house Soave from Vincentini, a real bargain at 12€ a 50cl bottle.

I have no doubt we’d have had a better experience if we’d dropped the name of our friends or had told them I was a journalist. (Regulars were getting Rolls Royce treatment from the sommelier, I noticed) but thought it was better to replicate the experience of an ordinary diner.Maybe we encountered an off night but I suspect not. Alle Testiere has an attitude problem it needs to fix before it can be classified in my book as a good restaurant, let alone a great one. There are many better places to eat in Venice where you’ll get a much warmer and more hospitable welcome.

Alle Testiere is in the Calle de Mondo Nuovo, Castello 5801 Tel: 041-5227 220

Sake no Hana - the new Nobu

Sake no hana in a nutshell

• Food: Modern Japanese. Exquisite sashimi and intriguing home-style dishes. You’ll need help deciphering the menu though.
• Wine: Sake, you mean. A massive and massively expensive list though there are a few reasonably priced options. Give the champagne a miss though at these prices
• Style/Decor: Stunning once you get through the wildly kitsch black and gold entrance
• Service: Excellent. Friendly and efficient
• Who to go with: A celebrity, preferably. Maybe Richard Gere . . .
• Who not to go with: Someone who’s never had a Japanese meal before
• Verdict: Potentially the new Nobu but will the food be too far out for its see-and-be-seen clientele?
• Cost: -

There’s a lot to say about Sake no Hana that isn’t to do with the food. The fact that it’s the latest opening from one of London’s most brilliantly innovative restaurateurs, Alan Yau - the creator of Wagamama, Hakkasan and Yauatcha - for a start. The hard-to-remember name which means sake of flowers. (The trick is to remember the sake bit and the rest falls into place) The rumour that the place is funded by a Russian billionaire but then isn’t everything these days? And the decor. Aaaaaargh, the decor!

Actually it’s really only the entrance that is a bit of a shock. When you walk through the door you’re greated by two long gold and black escalators that looked if they’ve come straight from a 1960s Bond movie. It’s possible they have. The restaurant used to be run by Geoffrey Moore, son of former 007 Roger Moore. Maybe they sold them to him as a job lot.

Anyway once you get to the top all is calm and beige with an intricate network of blond wood poles floating overhead and elegant timber-lined walls. (The restaurant has been designed by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma). There are two types of tables - Japanese-style ones where you sit on tatami mats and remove your shoes and western ones where you sit on chairs.

Actually there are two types of dining room, the posh area and a rather cramped extension of the dining room at the side which looks a bit like a bar or a waiting area, certainly not somewhere you’d expect to consume what is potentially an eye-wateringly expensive meal

The menu, we discover, is divided into styles of dishes such as tsuki dashi, tsukuri, yakimono, agemono, none of them familiar. So what to order? There isn’t really any guidance so we consult our waiter who suggests we try a bit of everything. Eyeing the prices nervously (the wagyu beef is £75) we decide to set him a price limit of £50 a head and let him make suggestions. As he talks us through each section the whole process takes about 10 minutes during which we down two very good cocktails including one that includes sake and poire William (Yau’s cocktails have always been first rate)

Four dishes in we discover we’ve ordered way too much. Confusingly some dishes are for one, others for four which does make the beef seem more reasonable. Highlights were the following:

• nasu iridashi a umami-rich dish of warm aubergine with a velvety sesame dressing scattered with bonito flakes. Probably the best aubergine you’ll ever have eaten

• kani no ume shu jelly a delicate sweet and sour dish of crab in plum jelly studded with huge red salmon roe eggs

• the sashimi (described on the menu as tsukuri) a surprisingly generous-sized helping of fabulously fresh, beautifully cut otoro (fatty tuna) and hamachi (yellowtail)

• the Chilean seabass in houba leaf with miso, gingko nut and shimeji mushrooms (a bit like Nobu’s black cod but lighter)

• the unagi no hitsumabushi (eel rice) from the shokuji menu, a real comfort food dish of intensely savoury eel mashed before us at table into sticky rice. Enough for four and way too much for us by this stage of the meal.

Mixed tempura and futomaki sushi (the latter again enough for four) were faultless but didn’t have quite the wow factor of the rest of the meal. There was only one disappointment - a braised dish of two rather soggy ‘purses’ filled with tofu and vegetables that I think was the chakin ni. Our fault because we’d disregarded the waiter’s suggestion of Poulet Noir Ni that I suspect would have been more to western tastes as too expensive. But it probably served 3 or 4.

We chickened out on the desserts which were urged on us by the staff with genuine enthusiasm. Our refusal seemed a particular disappointment to the sommelier Stuart - an improbable figure in these elegant oriental surroundings being large, cheerful and Australian - who wanted to show off a pairing he’d come up with of a rich oak aged sake called Hano Hato Junmai Kijoshu with a chocolate torte. He served the sake anyway which was quite remarkable - just like an oloroso sherry. (You can take a sake flight throughout the meal, matched to the dishes you order for 65)

If we go again, and it may be hard to get in once the fashionistas descend as they undoubtedly will, we would order more modestly: a salad, sashimi, the seabass and maybe the eel rice would make a great - and not too expensive - meal.

What Yau has managed to pull off yet again is to make an unfamiliar cuisine an accessible, relaxed and stylish experience. Sake no Hana looks like being the new Nobu.

Sake no Hana is at 23 St James's Street, London SW1A 1HA. Tel: 020 7925 8988
Email: mail@sakenohana.com

 

Hit and miss at Robuchon

Unable to make up our minds what to pick from the menu at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon the other night (and doing a quick calculation as to how much it would cost if we ate la carte) we opted for the tasting menu which threw up the usual hits and misses with the four wines our friendly waitress recommended by the glass. A shame because the quality of the food overall was outstanding.

A crisp Terras Gauda from Rias Baixas that went perfectly with a fabulous dish of frogs legs served like mini kievs stuffed with garlic flavoured mash didn’t remotely do justice to what must be the ultimate potato salad garnished with curls of foie gras and black truffle shavings. And a buttery Shaw and Smith M3 Chardonnay from the Adelaide Hills struggled both with a just-cooked egg cocotte topped with a layer of air-light mushroom froth and a perfectly caramelised scallop with a dark, dense watercress puree (both dishes, admittedly very hard to match with wine).

To their credit they couldn’t have been more helpful, allowing us to share each wine we ordered by dividing it between two glasses (it was a Monday night!) and even giving us a taste of three of the reds on offer to see which we liked best. One of the proferred wines, an Ata Rangi Clbre, would have been far too muscular to deal with a very delicate dish of sweetbreads which came with a tiny pot of Robuchon’s fabled mash - a liason of cream and butter, barely held together with potato. But it went fine with the Murdoch James Pinot Noir from Martinborough we ordered as did a umami-rich dish of roast quail, stuffed with foie gras.

We were feeling pretty stuffed ourselves by this time but managed to find room for two dazzling desserts, a Chartreuse souffle served with pistachio ice cream and a wonderfully playful white chocolate mousse, topped with a disc of dark chocolate and decorated with what looked like a necklace of pewter-coloured chocolate balls (see rather fuzzy illustration above).

I don’t understand though why a place where every dish is so carefully crafted should leave it entirely to chance what you drink. Sure, you should be able to order whatever bottle you like just as you can go in and just eat a plate of frogs legs or a dessert but with a tasting menu where every dish is designed to be perfectly in balance with the last it seems perverse not to at least offer the option of a perfectly matched drink, even if it’s no more than a shot.

For anyone who enjoys great food though L'Atelier is a must - but obviously not for a cheap night out.

L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon is at 13-15 West Street, London WC2H 9NQ. Tel: +44 (0)207 010 8600

See more discussion about the pitfalls of tasting menus on the forum.