It’s a warm summer day in late July in London, and the bounty of the British Isles is on display at Restaurant St. Barts. A rich bite of raw Belted Galloway beef on toast; a pot of English peas on a Japanese-inspired chawanmushi custard; slices of St. Bride’s duck served with a sunflower satay sauce and chunks of Cornish lobster tail laced with sansho pepper. The dishes showcase a broad range of culinary inspirations, but every ingredient on the menu comes from within the U.K.
It was that local ethos that chef Johnnie Crowe wanted to cultivate when he, Luke Wasserman and Toby Neill opened Restaurant St. Barts in 2022. The trio already operated Nest, a small Hackney-based restaurant with a seasonal menu. But Crowe felt he could take the concept further in a larger, fine-dining space. They found an empty site in Clerkenwell overlooking St. Bartholomew the Great, London’s oldest parish church.
The space is large and bright, but it also feels hidden away. “If you’re coming here, it feels a little bit secret and special,” Crowe tells Observer, sitting at Restaurant St. Barts. “This is a real passion project, and we want to make every little part of someone’s evening as special as it can be.”
Restaurant St. Barts opened in London in 2022. Steven Joyce
When Nest opened at the end of 2017, Crowe had already begun immersing himself in the possibilities of local ingredients. He had previously worked at Michelin-starred pub the Harwood Arms and at Farringdon restaurant Anglo, both of which focused on British cuisine. But Nest was an opportunity to go further. Crowe soon found himself obsessed with finding local suppliers who specialized in different types of meat, rather than relying on a single butcher for lamb, beef, duck or whatever was currently on the menu.
“That took me down the road of meeting these suppliers who are really focused on what their product is,” he says. “After we found all these amazing meat suppliers, I moved on to fish, and then it was vegetables, and then it was flowers, and then beans and grains. I really went down the rabbit hole.”
After applying those learnings to Nest, which relaunched earlier this year as Tavern in Shoreditch, Crowe went full steam ahead into Restaurant St. Barts. In the early months, he estimates that they were only able to source about 95 percent of their ingredients from the U.K. “There were a few stumbling blocks to get through,” he says. “But I felt like the producer side of things, and those connections, were what I was most passionate about. So why not build a restaurant around that as a concept?”
Langoustine. Yuhui Liu Eli
The limitation on provenance doesn’t impact Crowe’s ability to create complex, interesting dishes. If anything, it pushes him to be more creative. Instead of relying on a beloved international ingredient, Crowe looks for something just as good—if not better—within the U.K. “I don’t ever feel like we’re missing out,” he says. “I never look at another restaurant and go, ‘Oh, I wish we could have that.’”
Instead, Crowe wants to highlight what can be grown or cultivated in his home country, whether it’s quinoa, lemons or watermelons, which he came in this week. “We have such passionate people doing these things in the U.K.,” he says. “They’re nuts about it. Our Cornish lemon supplier—they love what they do. This restaurant is about us telling the guests, ‘Look how great all this stuff is and how passionate the people are who do it.’”
Crowe estimates that Restaurant St. Barts uses more than 40 different suppliers across the U.K. Instead of a single supplier for all meat, Crowe looks for the best person for the specific type of meat, like duck, rather than a farm that happens to sell it. He’s tried many different duck suppliers since he launched Nest. Restaurant St. Barts uses St. Bride’s Poultry in Scotland, a family-run farm.
Crowe sources ducks from St. Bride’s Poultry. Yuhui Liu
“If you do that extra bit of legwork, it gives it a ‘wow’ sense,” he says. “I talk to St. Bride’s about three months before I want to take something. And that’s the process with most of the things that come into the restaurant. It’s a lot of planning ahead.” He is always looking for new ones, too. “It’s a constant journey,” he says. “And we’re always open to finding someone doing something interesting.”
Some of the ingredients available locally have surprised Crowe, like sansho pepper, which is part of the lobster dish. It’s grown at a farm in Brighton, and Crowe likes it so much that he uses the lobster in two dishes: one with Chinese-inspired egg noodles made with coral roe and one with Cornish lobster tail. The chef wanted to showcase the different textures available in a single lobster.
Lobster, cuttlefish and British seed bun. Nathan Neeve
“The sansho pepper stands up really well to the lobster,” Crowe says. “Lobster is quite rich, so you’ve got to have something really cleansing. There’s a slight numbing quality you get from sansho pepper. You’re left with a clean palate at the end of it, which is key when you’re doing a tasting menu. With each dish, you’ve got to keep people interested and wanting more.”
The tasting menu is the only option at Restaurant St. Barts. There are two dinner menus: a long signature option (£170) and a shorter midweek option (£130), as well as a signature lunch menu (£130), a set lunch (£80) and a more concise business lunch (£60). The dishes rotate frequently based on what is currently in season. Crowe often swaps in new dishes and snacks, although the black koji and barley dessert rarely leaves.
The black koji and barley dessert is almost always on the menu. Neeve Photography
The dessert came about when the restaurant’s former head chef, Brendan Appleby, began experimenting with fermentation to create a chocolate flavor without needing imported chocolate. “He made that for me, and I thought, ‘I can turn this into something,’” Crowe says of the incredibly rich dish. “It was a challenge because it isn’t chocolate, and it doesn’t behave like chocolate. It’s been on the menu for about three years, and it’s changed a lot. It was quite simple to start with, but now we’ve added five different textures with the koji.”
Crowe, who grew up in Hammersmith and later resided in Somerset, has always been interested in how ingredients can be sustainably grown and sourced. His earliest cooking job was at Rwakobo Rock, a safari camp in Uganda’s Lake Mburo National Park, at age 19. The experience helped him learn to think on his feet in the kitchen, although at the time, he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to be a chef or a butcher. He did an apprenticeship at a butcher in London and worked in pubs for several years. By 24, he was running a pub.
“I was like, ‘This is not the ceiling for me,’” he says. “I enjoyed parts of it. But I didn’t want that to be it for my career. So I went to The Harwood Arms, which was Michelin-starred, and that was amazing. But towards the end of being there, I was curious about fine-dining tasting menus. I was there for over a year, which isn’t very long. I should have stayed another seven or eight months, but I was pretty impatient. I wanted to find my own style.”
Crowe credits Alex Harper, the former head chef at the Harwood Arms, with teaching him how to run a kitchen. At Nest, Crowe was the only person cooking—a situation that forced him to be resourceful and efficient. He channeled those formative experiences into Restaurant St. Barts, which proved to be a challenging undertaking in its early months.
“I worked every shift,” Crowe says. “It was nightmare stuff. Almost all of the staff left within seven or eight months.”
Despite that, Restaurant St. Barts earned a Michelin star within six months of opening. Looking back, Crowe says it was validating, but also too much, too soon. The award came so quickly, he wasn’t sure the restaurant could handle the accompanying attention. “In all honesty, I think we weren’t ready for it,” he says. “But it was a relief to see the recognition. And it’s helped us to get a better caliber of staff.”
Roast Norfolk chicken. Nathan Neeve
The restaurant also received a Michelin green star, awarded for sustainable practices, in February 2024. The green star is now being phased out and will be retired by the end of the year, but Crowe doesn’t think that will have a big impact on the perception or success of his restaurant. He will continue to use hyper-local ingredients and aim to be as low-waste as possible.
“It was nice to get that as an award, but for me, [sustainability] has never been about selling it to people,” he says. “It’s been more about, ‘Let’s try and get better at it every day.’ And the people who work here are passionate about that as well. So it’s important to the team, and it’s important to the restaurant as a whole. Right now, we’re not the most sustainable restaurant in the U.K., but we’re getting closer every day.”
The interior design also keeps sustainability in mind; it’s all locally sourced. Nathan Neeve
The furniture and the decor at Restaurant St. Barts are locally sourced. The wooden tables in the lounge, where guests have drinks and snacks before the meal, were crafted by Wasserman’s stepfather. For a while, Wasserman was making much of the crockery himself. More recently, the team has enlisted several British potters, including Steve Brown, to create custom pieces. “I like the eclectic mix of different things in here,” Crowe says. “And it’s great to support people making things in the U.K.”
A few items, like coffee and wine, still come from outside the country. Coffee isn’t grown in the U.K., and Crowe doesn’t want to limit a guest’s experience with a small wine selection. But the spirits in the cocktails are made in the U.K., and the team creates the nonalcoholic drinks in-house. Dining at Restaurant St. Barts reveals just how much is actually available within the U.K., from yuzu to ginger to melons. Crowe’s flavors come from all over the world, but because he creates them using only local products, they are even more exciting to taste.
Although it’s taken some time to develop, the chef believes the restaurant is now the best expression of itself. Still, though, he wants to continue showcasing the best British ingredients. “As people stay longer as well and grow with the restaurant, you’re able to really push harder,” Crowe says. “I think that’s what’s happening now. It’s a really good moment for us.”