Wild Honey St. James

Season first, luxury second

Anthony Demetre cuts the idea of luxury down to judgment, working as Chef at Wild Honey St. James in London with the plain rule, “I think great cooking is not about using luxury items.” At the pass, that position matters more than ornament. Demetre trained under Gary Rhodes and Bruno Loubet, two London kitchens where pace and precision had to hold under pressure, then carried the discipline through Putney Bridge, Arbutus and Les Deux Salons before returning to this room in 2022. His cooking has always read as controlled rather than theatrical: a cook’s eye on timing, acidity, texture and the point at which a dish has enough. Gardening sits close to the way he talks about the work. The comparison is practical, not pastoral. A gardener watches growth, weather and ripeness; a chef working this way watches season, heat and restraint. At Wild Honey St. James, that means modern European cooking with British and French influence, built through classic technique and seasonal produce rather than a procession of expensive signals.

A French method held to British produce

The kitchen’s language is clearest in dishes that sound simple until the hand behind them becomes visible. Hand-cut macaroni “cacio e pepe” arrives with crisp boneless chicken wings, a dish that depends on cut, coating and heat as much as comfort. Roast saddle of rabbit sits in another register, closer to the French discipline Demetre trained in, while octopus with leeks, capers and tomatoes puts salinity, sweetness and sharpness into a tighter frame. Lightly smoky eel with pâté and dill-accented cucumbers shows the same interest in contrast without excess. Line-caught English sea bass keeps the attention on the fish. His known signatures sit beside that work: Chocolate soup, Asparagus salad, Lamb stew with pearl barley, Mackerel tartare, Winter salad with pheasant. They give the kitchen a grammar. There is depth, there is a clean edge, and there is the old confidence of a cook who does not need every plate to announce itself.

The room around the pass

The dining room sits inside the Sofitel London St James, in a Grade II listed former banking hall at 8 Pall Mall. Jim Hamilton’s design gives the restaurant height, light and a certain formal calm: large windows, artwork, and a chandelier-like installation above a room that can carry polished service without turning stiff. The scale matters because Demetre’s food does not fight it. A custard tart can sit in that room without being made grander than it is; Wild Honey ice cream with honeycomb, or warm honey and lemon Madeleines, can close a meal by returning to the house name through texture and temperature. The pass has to keep pace with the architecture. It does, quietly.

Recognition kept at the address

Wild Honey St. James holds a Michelin star for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, and the restaurant has also been awarded 3 AA Rosettes for Culinary Excellence. Those numbers belong to this address, not to a borrowed mythology. Demetre’s longer career gives the room its discipline, but the measure here is the present-tense work: the daily menu, the cut pasta, the rabbit saddle, the custard tart. At Wild Honey St., the tart comes last. James Anthony Demetre’s kitchen tells you most clearly who it is when it has nothing left to hide behind but custard.