Johnnie Crowe: "There’s going to be crossover between our approach and how things are done in Scandinavia"

Restaurant St. Barts​​ is on a different scale to your previous two venues... 

Our other two places are neighbourhood restaurants. We want them to be as good as they can possibly be but we are limited by the size of the sites, especially at Nest, which was our first restaurant. We’ve been wanting to do something of this sort of scale for a few years but Covid got in the way.

Tell us about the site

We’ve been looking for a perfect site, or at least a site that’s as close to being perfect for us as possible, for some time. Restaurant St. Barts is a new build space that’s part of a big development close to Farringdon Station. We have views of St Bartholomew the Great (a famous medieval church). It’s semi-tucked away but very central. The build has taken longer than expected - we were supposed to open in summer. Restaurant St. Barts will be our flagship and somewhere that we can grow and expand, there’s a lot of space. It will be stripped back in feel. We’ve tried really hard to ensure that everything in the restaurant has a link to what we’re trying to do on the plate. Everything is made in the UK, from the curtains and the tables to the crockery.

How did you fund such an ambitious project?

We’ve done it fairly organically. We have been growing towards this for the last four years. We’ve taken out a loan from the bank, there is no other funding. 

Restaurant St. Barts has a much longer menu and a higher price point than your existing places 

That’s true. But we’re not trying reinvent the wheel. We’re not importing anything - not even lemons or chocolate. The food will be simple. We’re rarely have more than two things on the plate. The purpose of the project is to showcase the UK’s very best suppliers. We will be as seasonal as we possibly can but they’ll be an emphasis on preserving to give the menu an element of consistency. For example, we preserved 5kg of winter truffles for a cod dish we’re serving at launch. 

Restaurant St. Barts sounds a bit Scandi... ​

That’s fair. There’s a definite link. Our climate and the traditional cooking methods we use aren’t too dissimilar, so it makes sense. There’s going to be crossover between our approach and how things are done in Scandinavia.

What else is on the menu as you launch? 

Some of our other dishes include Welsh wagyu blinis with Exmoor caviar; red mullet terrine with salted kohlrabi; native blue lobster with fermented red peppers and British XO sauce; and sweetbreads with sunflower and Jerusalem artichoke. 

We hear customers will eat in more than one location - how will that work?

I find a lot of restaurants to be overly formal and not relaxing enough. We like the idea of people not bring rushed to their table: if you eat at someone’s home you don’t immediately go into the dining room. Meals will start in the bar with a drink and a few snacks. After that, people will be invited into the kitchen to meet the chefs and have another dish. When we launch we will be serving people a broth made from the bones from the red mullet used in a terrine. After that people will go into the dining room, but following dinner people will have the option to go back into the bar for coffee and petit fours, and a cocktail too, if they like.    

Tell us about the people involved in the business... 

I’m the chef, Luke (Wassermam) does the wine and oversees front of house and Toby (Neill) is more on the financial side. I’ve known both of them for a long time. I went to school with Luke and we met Toby at university. I went straight into the hospitality industry and they went into advertising and finance. We started out doing events and launched Nest in Hackney in 2017. We opened Fenn in Wandsworth in 2020.   

Are you worried about the location?

We’re aware that, historically speaking, Farringdon might not be the easiest place to run a restaurant. But the area has changed. We’re moments from the new Elizabeth Line and the new location for the London Museum. Restaurant St. Barts is not intended to be the sort of place that people will just stumble open. It’s a destination restaurant. Farringdon is obviously very central so we think it’s a good fit for what we want to do.