Tonight I went to St John Restaurant with my colleagues. This restaurant was voted as the 35th best restaurant in the world in 2006, and as the prices don't seem to be on the astronomical scale like its peers, this place was chosen as the first training ground for my French colleague who thought that there's no such thing as nice British food!

When the menu became available at 4pm, I immediately printed out a copy and passed around the office. It was fun to watch the faces and the reactions from the not-so-adventureous - "Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad - urgh!", "What is Chitterlings?", "Smoked Eel - that's disgusting" etc. So that was a good start to the restaurant that serves "Brutal British" cuisine (OK, my boss came up with that description, but it's actually rather appropriate).

I could see the horror on a few colleagues' faces when they heard that I was determined to try the Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley salad, but then two others followed my footstep and had the same starter. It was an interesting dish, though it was verging on the too greasy side (and generally I like bone marrow and do not have any problems with oily food) and it was not as tasty as I expected. For main course, I opted for Middlewhite with Chicory - Middlewhite is a breed of pig. The dish was just a thick slice of roast pork with slightly over-chewy chicory on the side - the meat was tender enough, even though overall the dish was rather bland. When I finished my main course, I wished I had smoked eel instead. The other main courses that came to our table included guinea fowl and lentils, rabbit and turnips, and lemon sole with tartare sauce (which was the play-safe option!).

Most of my colleagues were already too full to order a dessert, and so it left me and my French colleague to do the honourable thing and ordered desserts (for me, a meal is not complete without dessert). I chose the "Burnt Cream and Shortbread", and that is just exactly the British version of Creme Brulee (now, the debate becomes - is this a British dish or a French dish?). My dessert was enough to save the earlier disappointments in the starter and main course - the burnt cream was nicely made and had a generous amount of vanilla seeds in there. My colleague ordered the "Chocolate Pot with Hazelnut biscuit". The chocolate pot was full of surprises - first there was a layer of cream on top, and then half a spoonful of human hair in the chocolate! How disgusting was that?! I could understand the odd hair that got into the dessert, but this was a significant amount! Did the dessert chef just have a haircut and forget to wash his hair?

Service was so-so - the waitress who served us didn't seem to be happy in her job at all. Still, the appropriate cutleries and dishes got to the right persons without any prompting. Atmosphere-wise, the place was bright and noisy - good for a big crowd (like us) but definitely not for a romantic quiet dinner for two.

Would I go back to St John again? Maybe, but I have no desire to rush back.