Bread Street Kitchen, St. Paul's

Meeting up with my cousin who was working in town for the day near St. Paul’s, I considered the relatively recent creation of Bread Street Kitchen to be a suitable lunch venue to sample. A recent creation of the 11 Michelin Star awardee Gordon Ramsay, I figured it should be pretty decent. I’m a fan of Ramsay’s food ever since I cooked his pork stuffed with pistachio, cumin and apricot, and wrapped in ham. Absolutely divine. As a result, I had expectations regarding his restaurant.

Oh well, how wrong one might be. Let’s start with what was right about the place. Well, the venue is quite nice…I suppose.  Self-styled a lively and exciting bar and restaurant it’s set in a large warehouse type space apparently drawing inspiration from the East London aesthetic. Hhmmmnnn, clearly I should have read the website definition of what it defines itself as before going there. Self proclaiming to be a lively and exciting bar, does not a lively and exciting bar make; and drawing inspiration from the East London aesthetic makes you sound like a total wanker.

Our waiter was a nice and friendly chap. What else was nice about the place? No, that’s it.

I order poussin with chimichurri and burnt lemon. The poussin is a young chicken and it was grilled before being presented with a relatively tasteless chimichurri. I could detect the parsley, oil and possibly oregano; but that was about it. There was very little meat on the chicken, the piece was predominantly bones. It lacked the tenderness that one might expect from a young chicken. I ordered my chicken with a side of roast carrots. These were overcooked and had a sickly sweet taste to them. They were still miles better than the poussin however.

The other lunch ordered for the table was the rib burger with a side of chunky fries. Let’s start with the burger. You know there’s something wrong when a burger is left unfinished on the plate. The burger was overcooked and again the quality of the meat was just unacceptable. I spent 10 minutes ranting upon comparison to the burgers you get in Byron just down the road, or at Lucky Chip, or at Hawksmoor for that matter. The burger at Bread Street Kitchen was an insult to the great burgers offered elsewhere in this town. The chunky chips, again crap. I can’t be bothered wasting words on the rubbish that was served up. It makes me want to cry.

The only enjoyable part of the lunch (besides the company of course) was upon ordering tonic water the waiter misheard it for toilet water. With hindsight, it may have been apt to ask if the food had been cooked in the toilet as well. Lunch for two consisting of two non-alcoholic beverages, the two main courses and sides came to £39.45. The pain was all the greater as I picked up the bloody bill. I did not give a tip. This goes down as one of my worst dining experiences in London.   

I’m sure the rent is expensive at One New Change, and there’s the prostitution of a name to get punters through the door; but the food and the bill quite literally took the piss, that being the contents of the aforementioned toilet. A total horse pile of crap.