Why have I never been to St John before?

I always get asked what my favourite cuisine is, and invariably I always say French or Italian. But I had a real think the other day, and I realised that it might be British food in a lot of ways. A lot it I guess is about the comfort factor - whenever I am travelling, I crave shepherd's pie and macaroni cheese - but I am also blessed with the incredible British options available in the London restaurant scene.

Somehow it took me a long time to go to St John Bread & Wine, even though the food is completely up my street, and it is more or less down the road opposite Spitalfields Market. I've walked past it so many times, even examined the menu online and drooled a lot. Now that I've finally been there, I totally intend to go there all the time. Every week. And this is why:

It is asparagus season, and whilst I was waiting for an extremely late Dave, I scoffed some down, simply served with a bit of sea salt and melted butter. And it was exactly as it should be - the asparagus so sweet it was probably picked that day:

When Dave finally arrived, we immediately ordered what was probably the most 'challenging' dish on the menu: ox heart, watercress, and pickled walnut. We are both big big fans of the duck hearts at Anchor & Hope, and wondered what these would be like. They were served almost like minute steaks, sliced very thin and flash fried - what you get is the most morish pieces of meat, very rich in flavour, a new favourite dish for me:

We also ordered the most perfectly executed smoked haddock, potatoes and boiled egg - there was a huge kick of horseradish in the dressing, the egg was still wobbling about. I cannot fault this, I could eat it everyday in my garden:

The only slightly less successful thing we had was their soused mackerel with soda bread. I was expecting it to be a lot sharper than it actually was, and the flesh of the mackerel had been slightly destroyed during the sousing process, with hardly any texture at all. And there was the fact that it does feel like half the dishes come with some kind of bread, which makes it all a little heavy and samey:

Also served with bread was their brown crab meat on toast. Heart attack on a bit of bread, so so rich, but extremely good!

We also greedily had some mussels with Alexander, which is a herb that tasted a little like nettle - the mussels done in a marinere style, the Alexander was a lovely accompaniment.

It all felt like British tapas, and there were a ton of other things on the menu that we didn't try! The table next to us ordered 2 more main course sized pigeon and venison, both of which looked divine. And we didn't have any room for pudding, even though we were severely tempted by the marmelade ice cream.

And the best thing was the price. It is extortionately cheap for what it is. With two glasses of wine, all the above came to less than £60 - none of the dishes we ordered was more than £7, and slightly bigger main courses are around £9-12. I haven't added a new 'London favourites' restaurant onto this blog since I started it, but this is going in!!!