marrow

I ate at St John on Friday. The restaurant is most famous for its ‘nose-to-tail’ kitchen philosophy, where every part of the animal is saved, served and savoured; current residents of the menu include chitterlings (pig’s intestines) and roast bone marrow & parsley salad (pictured above). The latter is delicious, despite having the texture of cooked mucus, and involves scraping the inside of some roasted veal bones for its glutinous bounty, then spreading this jellied nectar onto slices of toast. This may sound unappetising, but I can guarantee that it’s genuinely mouthwatering, and that it won’t be long before I’m rustling up batches of the stuff in the blogjam kitchen.

Other dishes sampled included a piquant block of braised hare, a succulent hunk of middlewhite pork, a truly ambrosial marmalade ice-cream and a quite superior creme brulée.

I’d suggest that everyone book a table forthwith or, failing that, rush out and buy a copy of the restaurant’s own cookbook, and reproduce the dishes at home. While some of the recipes might fall foul of post-BSE government meddling (sheep brains are getting harder and harder to come by), others to attempt include crispy pig’s tails, duck’s hearts on toast and pea & pig’s ear soup.

Yummy.

11 Comments

  1. As I continue to say , “If you’re not willing to admit where your meat comes from, you should be a vegitarian.”

    Let hope StJohns goes on serving up what most people aren’t interesting enough to try, Crispy fried pigs ears anybody?

  2. marmalade ice-cream sounds delicious. was it chunky-cut? seville orange?

  3. That was very descripitve. It made me gag a little due to the idea of that texture.

  4. Don’t go there with a pregnant lady. I accompanied an ex-boss on a thank you lunch – he was taking someone he’d worked with who was pregnant. We got there and there was about 1 thing she could eat i think – it was probably a side salad :)
    (It was a pretty stupid place to take her)

  5. One day I will book the private room and have the whole roast suckling pig. It looks so wonderful when they parade it through the restaurant on a silver tray.

    I’m a big fan of their eccles cake with lancashire cheese. Lovely combination.

  6. (sheep brains are getting harder and harder to come by)

    That’s really strange. From what I’ve heard, sheeps still come with brains at birth. Where do the brains go? Who’s using them? For what goals? Why doesn’t the government do anything about it?

    I think the questions raise new, more dangerous ones.

  7. >>it won\’t be long before I\’m rustling up batches
    >>of the stuff in the blogjam kitchen

    Fraser, Fraser, Fraser: you’re not actually telling us that you’ve never had Osso Bucco, are you? If this is indeed the case, then this omission in your epicurean odyssey needs to be rectified forthwith.

  8. Hey, I’ve been there. Gloucester Old Spot pork chops = yum!

  9. Osso Bucco utterly rules. And I’ve eaten at St. John’s before: I highly recommend it!
    ~Milady
    xxx

  10. God I love that stuff. Did it come with those cute little spoons to scoop it out?