St. JOHN Bread and Wine, the Spitalfields offshoot of Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver's landmark Smithfield restaurant, has closed its doors after 24 years of continuous trading. The closure of the Commercial Street site marks the end of one of London's most quietly influential restaurant spaces — a room that played a formative role in shaping the city's approach to casual fine dining, nose-to-tail cooking and the particular kind of no-fuss hospitality that has since become one of British restaurant culture's most imitated registers.
The original St. JOHN in St. John Street, Smithfield, continues to operate.
A notice on the door
No announcement was made in advance. A notice appeared on the Commercial Street door on Friday evening thanking customers for 24 years of trade, signed in the characteristically understated manner the group has always maintained. Within hours it had been photographed and shared widely across the restaurant industry's online networks, prompting an outpouring of tributes from some of the most significant figures in British and international cooking.
The closure is understood to be the result of a combination of factors including lease renewal terms, the sustained pressure on the economics of informal dining in central London, and a decision by Henderson and Gulliver that the Smithfield mothership is where the group's energy and identity is most purely concentrated.
The archive dinner series
In lieu of a conventional closing event, Henderson and Gulliver have announced a series of Archive Dinners to be held at the Smithfield site over the next three months. Each dinner will revisit a specific year or period in the restaurant's history, recreating menus and — where possible — involving the chefs and front-of-house staff who worked at the restaurants during those periods.
Details of the Archive Dinners will be announced through the St. JOHN mailing list. Tickets are expected to be released in limited numbers.
What Bread and Wine meant
To write about the closure of St. JOHN Bread and Wine without sentimentality is difficult, because sentimentality is precisely what the place always resisted. It was a room of plain white walls, closely spaced wooden tables and a menu that changed twice daily. It had a wine list curated with the same principled eccentricity as its sibling. It served the kind of food — bone marrow on toast, devilled kidneys, Eccles cakes with Lancashire cheese — that managed to feel both completely English and completely original.
Its influence on a generation of British chefs and restaurateurs is difficult to overstate. The aesthetic of white walls and unfussy cooking that defines so much of what is considered serious British restaurant culture today traces a direct line back to St. JOHN and, by extension, to Bread and Wine's role in demonstrating that the approach could work at different scales and price points.
The Smithfield site carries the flag forward. Bread and Wine will not be forgotten.