The English Pig

The English Pig is situated near the City of London Museum, and is unusual in focusing on one specific ingredient: pork. The lunch menu offers some additional options, but the dinner menu is almost entirely porcine, even with chocolate and bacon brulee for dessert. Three courses in the evening costs £30, while a two course lunch was £17.95. Chef Johnny Mountain previously had a restaurant called Mosaica @ the Factory in Wood Green and trained with Alistair Little, amongst others.

The wine menu started at £16 and included wines such as Preignes le Neuf Chardonnay vin de pays 2009 at £20 for a wine that retails at £5, Domaine Ellevin Petit Chablis 2009 at £29.50 for a wine that costs around £11 in the shops, and Domaine Mathieu Chateauneuf du Pape 2007 at a relatively kind price of £49 for a wine that will set you back around £27 to buy in the high street. This was just a quick lunch, so I was unable to go the whole hog. A salad of pork scratching featured scratching with good texture (this can often be rock hard) and flavour, resting on salad leaves with an unusual and effective dressing based on a rhubarb puree. This scratching was not in the league of my benchmark one at the Sportsman, but was very nice indeed (13/20).

Pork burger was served with matchstick fries and a little pickled cucumber, and had good flavour; a little lemon mayonaisse added useful acidity. The burger itself was charred a bit too much on the grill for my taste. The charcoal taste, which can be lovely in moderation, came through too strongly and distracted from the flavour of the pork, but the burger itself was otherwise was carefully cooked and the fries were fine (13/20). The two courses, with water only, cost £26 all in, which at lunch didn’t seem much of a bargain, but this is the City, and the dinner menu was fairly priced. This was a rather fleeting visit, and I will come back at some point to try some more dishes, but this seemed to me an interesting concept and a place worth trying if in the area.