Triple threat: Mark Jarvis on Anglo, Neo Bistro and Stem

‘I was working at The Bingham in Richmond when my now business partner came in, saw what I was doing and asked if I wanted to set out on my own,’ explains Mark. ‘We looked at a few sites in Marylebone and it was all a bit predictable, but then I got a text about an old Italian restaurant in Farringdon. When I went to take a look I knew it didn’t need much work and it could be a fun place to run – there weren’t the pressures of huge rents or massive refurbs that would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.’

Thrown in at the deep end, Mark and his very small team spent two weeks painting the walls, bringing in furniture and getting the place ready to open. The kitchen itself at Anglo is tiny – barely enough room for three people – so the larger prep kitchen downstairs is vital for a smooth service. ‘At the start there were just three of us having fun – I remember the first person who came to eat here asked to pay, and we realised none of us knew how to use the card machine. We had to hand it over to her so she could put the payment through!’

Things rapidly changed, however, when London’s top food critics started walking through the door, just days after Mark’s first service. ‘Having the critics come in made me so nervous of who was going to walk through the door every service,’ he says. ‘The power someone like Grace Dent has is huge – when her review came out our website and phone lines went down because they were absolutely jammed with people trying to book a table. People still come in and tell us they booked because of her review, asking for specific dishes she mentioned. Then when we won awards from the likes of The Observer, GQ and The Caterer, we went from this little restaurant on a backstreet in Farringdon to something much more. It shows that if you get it right, people will come and check you out no matter where you are.’

But what is it that makes Anglo such a critical success? The food is modern British – a term that can be hard to define at the best of times – and there’s hardly a shortage of restaurants in London and the rest of the UK putting their own spin on the same concept. Mark thinks it has more to do with the service, which is very relaxed and welcoming to all, and the fact that he can quickly change things and keep the menus affordable because he’s in such a small restaurant. But it’s the food that makes people come back again and again; Mark’s dishes often pair unusual ingredients together, or turn preconceptions on their head.

‘I really like playing with people’s perceptions,’ he explains. ‘For instance, we have an artichoke ice cream on at the moment with maple syrup and coffee – most people think of artichokes as something you chargrill with olive oil on top, so to have it as an ice cream is a new experience. One of the other dishes that really showcases what we do here is our rump of beef. We age it ourselves until it’s got a really deep, savoury flavour, then serve it with a bone marrow custard, a molasses glaze and an acidic bonito jelly. It’s got both familiar elements and then something different and quite modern.’

A year later came Neo Bistro in Mayfair – a much more ‘traditional’ area of London to open a restaurant with high footfall and plenty of choice. The hubbub around Anglo might still have been in full swing when Mark opened his second restaurant in July 2017, but that didn’t stop him from making his next venture – which he opened with chef Alex Harper – just as popular.

‘I’d always had the place in my mind and was always working on the concept, but it was when the site was offered to us at a very good price that we went for it,’ he says. ‘Originally we were just going to do a pop-up, but again it was so well received that it became a permanent fixture. The food is more substantial there and we’ve recently made the dishes a little bit homelier to entice the large amount of passing trade, but it’s still the same really cool cooking you get at Anglo. There’s an à la carte and bar snacks menu at Neo, too, which I suppose makes it more accessible to people just looking for a place to eat without doing too much research beforehand.’

More top reviews soon followed, and the quirky combination of old school pub surroundings with innovative, contemporary dishes that nodded to familiar classics gave fans of Anglo enough to enjoy but kept the feeling distinctly separate. ‘I think at the beginning Neo Bistro was more similar to Anglo, but today it’s definitely its own thing,’ says Mark. ‘By adding that homely feel to our dishes it seems to fit in with the pub vibe a bit more, and there’s more scope for people to just pop in for a few bites instead of a full-blown multi-course dinner.’