Fine dining at “St Luke’s Table”
After waiting around 20 minutes beyond our agreed collection time with the General Manager, we meandered up the staircase to “St Luke’s Table”, the 40-cover fine dining eatery and the domain of Head Chef Alessio Piras, formerly of Richard Caring’s Soho House Group venues such as Cecconi’s and Shoreditch House.
It’s a very small restaurant with no open windows or air conditioning, and has very few tables. Also, depending on your preference, you can sit on the long blue banquette or the curved sandy coloured chairs. Furthermore, it’s advisable to book early so that you have the full choice of what’s on the menu, because ingredients are bought in very limited quantities. As we were late arriving to the restaurant, due to the above, my other half missed out on her first choice as a large group of guests had ordered before us.
St Luke’s Table only uses the freshest of ingredients sourced from the local markets, and although the menu is brief, it offers both carnivorous and vegan options (these are due to be split into two clearly defined à la cartes going forward). It is also pretty expensive, and because it’s fine dining, the portions are very nicely presented, but at the same time, are not huge. 30 new wines, and cocktails from Dear Alice, are also available to accompany the meal, plus the venue has a deal with Pommery Champagne.
I started dinner with the spicy tomato and pepper soup (£13), which came with a splattering of croutons that had been lightly doused with olive oil. My wife opted for the grilled asparagus with pea shoots and Nepalese purple potato salad (£17), which was decorated with sesame and pomegranate seeds. Both were extremely well concocted and we could have easily had more.
After a half an hour pause, it was time for the mains, and I headed for the “Linguine Artichokes” (£19). It was a slightly misleading name for the dish, as it was rather linguine pasta with artichokes. Topped by a sprinkling of breadcrumbs and nuts, it was delicious and was worth the wait. It had a creamy flavour, but there were no dairy ingredients in sight, such was the skill of the three-man team in the kitchen. As the lamb was no more, my other half had the beetroot risotto (£18), which was just as tasty and came with small walnut pieces to finish it off.
Desserts are always a tough choice, and I settled on the cheese platter (£12) which featured some nice water biscuits, celery sticks, grapes, apple chutney, some brie, blue cheese, goats’ cheese and Taleggio. My other half in the meantime, tucked into some pineapple carpaccio (£8) that was garnished with some chilli and pomegranate seeds, and was full of flavour – the chefs had clearly worked their magic as a clean plate was left once again.
Eternal patience (not one of my strong points) will reward at St Luke’s Table, as it takes an age to get the menu (essentially a creased piece of paper with a few greasy spots), an age to order, and an age for the food to arrive, as just one person, i.e. the General Manager, was tending to 16 people all at the same time, which simply doesn’t work in the sphere of fine dining. It was a pleasant, but a frustrating experience, and was not helped by the numerous apologies from our host.
This ruined what could have been such a unique evening, and a venue which has so much potential to be one of London’s hidden gems. On that note, it wasn’t only us that was finding this eatery sub-standard, as on the next table, the couple’s visit to Dear Alice was one hour behind schedule, and they even ended up skipping dessert and paying a combination of our bill and theirs, such was the chaotic organisation behind the scenes. Also, it’s the only restaurant where I have seen a book placed on each table (in our case – I Choose to Live by Sabine Dardenne), and it should have been an obvious hint that you would need to pick it up to start turning some pages in order to pass the significant downtime (20 to 30 minutes on average) between courses.
It’s a real shame that the service lets the side down at this members’ club (supposedly it’s normally better than we experienced), as the food from start to finish was superb and truly couldn’t be faulted. Considering LIBRARY has just celebrated its fifth birthday, you would have thought that the team would have got the art of hospitality down to a tee. However, the reality is, is that a new chapter has to start, because otherwise, their business will be the victim of its own downfall and be quickly confined to the history books.