Saturday, October 18

Andrew


Andrew on the school playground. He and his family live in our nearby neighborhood and he too is in private equity at an established UK firm. Andrew is also a serious runner, as is his wife, and for a while we jogged in the early morning until injuries plagued my existence. He will run the London marathon in April, he tells me.

Sonnet and I have dinner at St John's which is perhaps my favorite restaurant. Located in Clerkenwell next to Spittlefields market, which supplies London's meat, the restaurant was opened by Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver in '94 in a former smokehouse which had fallen in to disrepair once ham and bacon smoking ceased in '67. St John's moto, "from nose to tail eating," kinda says it all: offal and other cuts of meat rarely seen in restaurants, often reclaiming traditional British recipes. Typical dishes are pigs' ears, ducks' hearts, trotters, pigs' tails, bone marrow and, when in season, squirrel. It is consistently ranked inside the World's Top 50 and the New Yorker Magazine profiled St John's as one of the world's most important. Aman. I took my parents BTW and they hated it. Sonnet and I indulge in lamb shanks (raw) and horseradish; calf's bone marrow+sea salt and endives; and smoked eel, bacon and mash. I finish it off with a light bordo - hanibal would be proud.