Modern Pantry
47–48 St John’s Square Clerkenwell London EC1V 4JJ
Next to The Zetter Townhouse, in Clerkenwell’s St John’s Square, the Modern Pantry has a first-floor restaurant with two dining rooms and a ground-floor bar and café which spreads to outdoor seating in the square on a sunny day. There’s also a ‘Pantry’ for takeaway cakes, sandwiches and pastries. The building is a converted warehouse and the simple clean lines, decorated in mostly whites and greys with no bright colours, keeps everything super cool. Behind it all is Anna Hansen MBE, and under her tutelage the food is fusion cooking at its best, with a real mix of styles bringing together unusual ingredients. Their signature dish – sugar-cured prawn omelette with green chilli, spring onion, coriander and smoked-chilli sambal – is pretty good, especially when washed down with their popular Japanese Mary cocktail comprising vodka, yuzu lime, wasabi, soy, Tabasco and tomato juice with a sake float.
