Eating is social, except when it's not

Of feasts and friends

I’m not much for big birthdays, which makes this year a bit of an anomaly. I turned 34 last Friday, and across the weekend managed to mark the occasion with three extravagant meals out, a movie marathon, and, somewhat less excitingly, new running shoes.

The centrepiece was, undoubtedly, the feasting menu at St. John, a joint birthday outing with my partner. This was the epitome of social eating, 19 people pitted against one unfortunate suckling pig, eased along with magnums of crémant, no shortage of red, and some late in the day cocktail orders. 

This, we’re told, is what food is for, beyond mere nourishment. It can bring together friends, families, communities; create bonds where there were none; reveal commonalities across cultural divides.

Few of our guests had been to St. John before, but most had heard me sing its praises. Half were North Americans, and so perhaps — not unfairly — sceptical of the virtues of British food as fine dining. Alongside simply celebrating my birthday, I relished the chance to introduce them all to what is perhaps my favourite London restaurant, one that I’ve loved since a very first visit on another birthday a few years ago.

I knew I might win them over with the understated alchemy of the bone marrow salad, as simply dressed flat-leaf parsley cuts through the bone, the unctuous marrow and sharp salad yielding a whole entirely beyond the sum of its parts. Later, tender slabs of ox cheek quivered in a pool of green sauce and beans, while a duo of bread and butter pudding and a fruit tart created an army of American custard converts between them.

But really, we were all there for the pig. That poor little creature is the promise that had drawn us to St. John’s feast in the first place, and it’s a uniquely social experience: there’s simply no sensible way to eat a whole roast pig by oneself.

At this point I could muse on the nature of our relationship with meat, or St. John’s nose-to-tail philosophy, expressed quite literally here, but that would be disingenuous. This was not, at its heart, such a sophisticated experience — it was 19 people getting drunk and devouring a pile of pork. It’s a testament to St. John’s unceremonious atmosphere that our depravity was just about permitted; it’s hard to imagine many Michelin joints would feel the same.

For all the many pleasures of that dinner of excess, I have a confession: I took just as much joy from a solo lunch the day before — a meal no less decadent, no less extravagant, no less alcoholic, for being enjoyed by myself.

I make no secret of my love for Brutto, the late Russell Norman’s ode to Florence. There’s a strange synchronicity to my visits to these restaurants — not only do they lie a street apart, but in fact my first visit to St. John three years ago was also a three-course lunch for one on a birthday. But this wasn’t my first trip to Brutto, rather my second — the first for dinner on my birthday last year. Between those two and a 2022 visit to The Quality Chop House, I can account for four birthdays in a row spent within a half-mile radius of Farringdon — mark your diaries for Bouchon Racine 2025.

Anyway, Brutto. I’ve partly got the Florence bit of it all to thank for my affection towards it — I had a tremendous trip to the city late last summer, and having adopted Fiorentina as my Serie A team in a bid to improve my stuttering Italian, I hope to have quite a few more. The Florentine commitment to meat and beans doesn’t hurt either, and Brutto leans into the carnivorous simplicity of the regional diet well.

For two glorious hours on Friday I sat perched along Brutto’s bar, working my way through three courses and five drinks. The £5 house negroni is almost non-negotiable — I can’t imagine anyone serves a better one near this price. I cracked and ordered one repeat dish from my last visit, a rabbit pappardelle that’s infuriatingly better than my own, though I intend to close that gap. Sausages and lentils to follow, and a raspberry and almond tart alongside an amaro and a brisk espresso to see me out the door.

Brutto has always proclaimed a love for solo diners — not to mention walk-ins — even if not everybody gets it. My mum seemed positively worried for my wellbeing when I told her I was spending my birthday eating lunch alone, clearly assuming that this could never be by choice.

I probably have a few years of solo travel to thank for my ease in heading to restaurants alone, which I didn’t always find comfortable. Not that it’s necessarily simpler abroad — a trip to Seoul last year was one of my trickiest when it came to dining by myself. Restaurant staff seemed confused to see a solo traveller rock up, and the likes of fried chicken or Korean BBQ simply don’t come portioned for one - half the time I had to order two or three people’s food for little old me, because that’s just how the menus were built.

But eating by myself isn’t only something I do out of necessity from travelling, ticking off restaurants I want to write about, or hunting down hype dishes. It’s something I seek out, and I knew from the get-go that if I was going to mark my birthday with an enormous dinner with friends, I’d have to mark it for myself with something solo too.

Feasting at St. John was everything I hoped it would be. Tremendous food shared with friends, a menu I couldn’t enjoy any other way, a night of excessive eating that led quite naturally to equally excessive drinking. But at Brutto I found a different pleasure. I could sit and savour, luxuriate in every course and each mouthful, simply sit and be with my meal (and my Twitter feed).

This was a meal for no-one but me, a birthday present served across three courses with wine, the only gift I could ever really ask for.