One Leicester Street: an oasis of calm off Leicester Square

It would be unfortunate if One Leicester Street became known as the restaurant that used to be St John’s Hotel. Not least because the chef Tom Harris, who used to front the kitchen there but has stayed on to run his own show, has put his own individual stamp on the food.

St John’s robust, hearty staples have been replaced by a lighter Nordic-influenced menu but one that doesn’t skimp on flavour. That said - I remember having the first dish we tried - some puffed up Quaver-like pieces of pigskin with a delicious sharp, salty cod's roe dip - in the St John days.

We cruised our way through a series of small plates including some a lovely dish of crab with home-made (I would guess) rye crackers smothered with a creamy purée of the brown meat, topped prettily with white meat, dill and purslane (below), pig’s cheek ham and fennel, grilled leek and hazelnut purée and pheasant’s egg (yum) and smoked herring and beetroot (which I found a bit oily). Oh - and a perfect fresh lettuce and radish salad with a buttermilk dressing. This seems the best way to go at lunchtime at least.

Cheese courses are unusually imaginative - I loved the pickled gooseberries and homemade crackers that were served with the Sparkenhoe Red Leicester - why can’t more restaurants do this? Puds, by contrast were possibly a bit clever-clever - salt caramel apple and hazelnut was a busy plate of jagged shards of hazelnut tuile, dried apple and the now-mandatory crumbs (below) while the flavour of violet in a dessert of chocolate, honeycomb and violet was drowned in a sea of chocolatey topsoil. Unlike the rest of the menu it all seemed to be striving a bit too much for effect though I’m probably the last person to pronounce on puddings.

The wine list is short but imaginative with a particularly good selection by the glass. My crisp, dry Petrucco Friulano 2011 from the Friuli was the perfect foil to the dishes we'd picked. Service is friendly and unsnooty and prices more than reasonable for the area. There’s a working lunch and pre-theatre menu of two courses for £16 and £19 for three.

Will it work better than St John’s? Who knows? It was worryingly short of bums on seats when we lunched there a couple of weeks ago but it’s had good reviews and is in a part of town (just off Leicester Square) where there should be plenty of punters.

Basically it’s a modern, sophisticated reasonably priced restaurant in a place you wouldn’t expect to find one. A good spot to meet a friend in central London.

One Leicester Street is at (surprise, surprise) One Leicester Street, London WC2 7BL. Tel: 020 3301 8020.

I ate at One Leicester Street as a guest of the restaurant.

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