Nest team to open ambitious Smithfield restaurant later this year

Located close to the former Smithfield Market in Clerkenwell, Restaurant St. Barts will have a considerably higher price point than Johnnie Crowe, Luke Wasserman and Toby Neill debut restaurant on Morning Lane and Wandsworth Road's Fenn with the main tasting menu starting at £120 a head (a six course lunch menu will also be available for £60). 

Executive chef Crowe says the new restaurant represents a new chapter for the trio. “It’s the restaurant we’ve always dreamed of opening. Over the last seven years we’ve met and worked with some of the most incredible suppliers from across the UK, and Restaurant St. Barts will be our opportunity to showcase them under the one roof.”

“We want to create an experience that focuses on respect - towards the natural environment, the incredible produce that comes from it, and everyone involved in the process.”

Overseen by Crowe, the kitchen team will create ‘a menu of refined dishes that pinpoint their mission to represent British produce’. 

Ingredients will be ‘championed in their simplest form’, with each dish using no more than two key ingredients to 'highlight the provenance of the produce itself'.

Guests will be welcomed into the bar area of the restaurant, where they will be served snacks including house cured meats, such as Mangalitza pancetta and Yorkshire beef salami, a floral tea-infused Beetroot, and a Welsh wagyu bellini with Exmoor caviar.

The next stage of the meal will be served at the chef's counter, with dishes including the likes of red mullet terrine with salted kohlrabi, served alongside a broth made from the roasted bones of the fish.

The majority of the meal will be served in St. Barts’ main restaurant area, which overlooks the cloisters of St Bartholomew The Great, a mediaeval church

Here guests will be served dishes such as native blue lobster with fermented red peppers and British XO sauce; poached cod with preserved Wiltshire truffle; and sweetbreads with sunflower and Jerusalem artichoke. 

The wine pairing will be created by Wasserman and will focus on low intervention wines.  

Taking inspiration from the natural materials used to create the historic buildings around them, Restaurant St. Barts will use raw materials including stone, wood and linen to ‘bring a feeling of the old Smithfield to the new’. 

A 10 ft stone topped bar will dominate the entrance to the restaurant with lime wash plaster walls, exposed brick and natural stone flooring will 'create an elegant but contemporary dining space'.

In line with the teams’ sustainability ethos, Neill and local woodworker Archie Faber will use wood from fallen London Plane trees to create the restaurant’s hand carved tables.