Posted @withrepost • @st.john.restaurant An image from the early days. There in the middle is a young Trevor, money made from band merchandise (it is he who created those Frankie Says Relax t-shirts), ready to spend it all on the uncertain world of restaurants. On the right is Fergus in his late 20s, head full of trotters and certainty, but preoccupied with how to retain the band of chefs who kept disappearing, felled by late nights or poached by more certain futures. On the left is Jon Spiteri, the General Manager when St. JOHN first opened and for some years to follow, immediately recognisable in the fine spectacles that he still wears today.
If you look closely you can see some changes – those round piggy ashtrays on the tables became square at some point, so many were stolen and the product changed (it seems that the bathrooms of a nation are furnished with pilfered St. JOHN ashtrays. Ask your friends. There will be one). The cloakroom on the left, manned by the redoubtable Mary, is now our dry store. Chefs now happily stay and stay. The Clerkenwell which lay on our doorstep was not the same then as now; Fergus recalls standing at the threshold looking out into the empty dark, imagining tumbleweed pass. “One night I even thought I saw the Northern Lights”. But that counter still bears the loaves that we bake ourselves, and the interior remains almost entirely unchanged – remarkably even those tables and chairs are the very same, surviving a quarter-century of heavy wear.
We are honoured that, tomorrow night, @eaterlondon is dedicating their Eater Talks to the history and legacy of St. JOHN, in conversation with our beloved @spitz69 and brilliant @danlepard, as well as two of our more recent distinguished alumni: wonderful @ravneeteats of @Countertalk and the inimitable Lee Tiernan of @blackaxemangal. This panel should mean an enlightening, entertaining and possibly anarchic evening, as befits St. JOHN. An Eccles Cake and Cheese and a glass of Crémant de Limoux for all on arrival, also fitting. The link for tickets is in our bio.
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#eatertalks #stjohnrestaurant #stjohn #fergushenderson #trevorgulliver #jonspiteri #stolenashtray #clerkenwell
