St John Hotel, 1 Leicester Street, London WC2. Tel 020 3301 8020. Meal for two, including wine and service, £100
Fergus Henderson and his business partner Trevor Gulliver open the kind of restaurants they would like to eat in. This is not a great insight. It is an observation based on the fact that they are often seen eating in their own restaurants. The day I visited the newly opened St John Hotel, just north of Leicester Square in London, they were at a back table, Henderson in the kind of bright blue pinstripe three-piece suit that other people would wear for a bet and he makes look entirely natural.
It was the right place for him to be. That evening would bring the annual announcement in London of the 50 Best Restaurants in the World list, and the room was lousy with people who cook for a living: here a table of Mexicans, there some Finns, at the table in the middle the Spanish contingent. This lot may do intricate things with dehydrators and sous-vide machines in their own kitchens, but when they come here it is in Henderson's restaurants that they congregate. His tightly written menus, on a knife edge between urban rustic and complete piss-take, are exactly what cooks want to eat on their days off. It is as successful here as it has ever been at the St John mothership in Clerkenwell.
All that said, I had my doubts about the notion of a St John Hotel. The original is housed in a big-boned, whitewashed former smokehouse and has about it the aspect of an abattoir after the blood has been wiped from the walls. Eating lunch in such a place, which eschews trinkets and baubles, is a self-consciously fashionable anti-fashion statement. Sleeping in such a space is a different matter entirely. Having seen pictures of the bedrooms, in the building that was once the great fish restaurant Manzi's, I can say they look a bit like that special clinic you might visit so nursey could do something intimate and expensive with the rubber tubing and the bucket.
At St John Hotel, however, the rectangular dining room with, at one end, the open kitchen, seemed at first soulless – a works cafeteria without the glamour. Filled with bearded cooks – and beards are this season's culinary accessory – it developed a buzz of its own. The changing menu is short and, while not cheap, cheaper than at St John. Starters are generally £8.50 or less. Mains loiter in the teens. St John being notorious for doing interesting things with the inner wobbly bits of animals, it seemed right to start with croquettes of pig's head, the crisp deep-fried shells giving way to something soft and irredeemably piggy. They tasted like a grown-up – though not very grown-up – version of Frazzles.
Just like me, the fish soup arrived looking terribly thin, a rust-coloured liquor which my companion compared, uncharitably, to late-night dishwater. But again, just like me, it had serious depth. On the side was a piece of sourdough toast spread with ripe brown crab meat. It was all the kind of thing upon which the St John reputation is built: a simple idea done very well indeed.
For mains there were things like snails and bacon or grilled skirt steak with onions and horseradish or a pike and leek pie for two. We chose the other sharing dish, a huge bowl of long-braised caramelised bacon chops with luscious ribbons of fat in a stew of generously sauced beans. It cost £28; I wonder if it might be possible to sneak in and order it just for one. A sprightly dressed watercress salad cut through the bacon fat and white bean lusciousness.
At dessert our waiter told us we should order the custard tart and we did as we were told. It was a good call. One nudge of the plate and the 2in-thick custard filling had the kind of wobble that gets men of a certain age excited. It tasted fabulous, too, the custard punched through by a sprinkle of nutmeg. A rhubarb trifle was no slouch either.
For all its British posturing, the St John wine lists have always bent the knee to the eternal verities of Europe; full of well-priced classics from France and Italy. Happily there is also a late-opening bar in which to drink them, and a late-night menu for those who forgot to eat.
The St John Hotel has been open only a few weeks, but already it feels like the kind of resource that this last vaguely seedy corner of London really needs.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
