St John keeps Emin going

The lights are bright, but this place isn't for some kind of cosy rendezvous. The menu changes daily and is written on a blackboard. The whole place has a fantastically relaxed style.

St John Bread and Wine is a diminutive relation of award-winning chef Fergus Henderson's St John restaurant in Clerkenwell. "We're not claiming to be a restaurant in the conventional sense," he says, "and we're not bound by restaurant rules of lunch and dinner. This place just stemmed from wanting to expand the baking we were doing at St John.

"We just put food on the plate for you that changes throughout the day, from coffee and Eccles cakes or little buns filled with anchovy paste - our take on Gentleman's Relish - in the morning, to lunchtime dishes, from fat kippers to shallots roasted in their skins, so you can squidge out the insides on to bread with a blob of young goat's cheese, smoked herrings, or John Dory just roasted in the bread oven, with a chunk of lemon. In the afternoon, the madeleines come out, and then the dinnertime dishes. You can nibble or feast all day if you want to - this is liberty hall."

How right Henderson is. It is now 10.30pm. I'm sitting with Sandra of "thee" Golden Heart, with yet another bottle of champagne. "Ohh Baabe," she says, "this place is the best thing that's happened to this area, and I should know."

She's right. She should know. We have bread. We have a bakers, and it's not a bagel shop. It's home-baked bread made on the premises. Star attraction of St John Bread and Wine is definitely the giant dough mixer; more stainless steel than you would ever want to be thrown into.

Phew. It's 8am - breakfast. This is much more my scene foodwise - kippers, bacon sandwiches, ginger loaf with crème fraiche, stewed-apple yoghurt with a few raspberries thrown in, plus, at the weekend, every newspaper I want to read. On Sundays the place buzzes as Spitalfields market sets up. Brick and Petticoat lanes are just round the corner.

I look around in a haze. The whole place is swarming with people I know. Even if I didn't know them, I feel as if I do now. I have been here for 11 hours - sitting more or less in the same place, watching the world go by.

St John Bread and Wine is a place where you can drink, eat and talk, in any order, at any time of day, but it does not pretend to be a restaurant. It's a place to hang out and relax, yet it is not all comfy, hippie sofas. Beware, though, it's not cheap (certainly not if you spend 11 hours there). My only other advice - if you are having a clandestine affair, don't go.

I wake with a force-10 hangover at 5pm but still feel fantastic. Still drunk, I guess, but now extremely hungry. It's amazing what a good glass of white wine can do. I swear to God I black out, but, sod it, I am happy.

Kidneys and liver remain 100 per cent intact. At least it's two bottles of good wine, not a bottle of brandy. I still miss the old days after dinner - no desert, just two fantastic doubles. On that thought, I pass out. I dream of gigantic wooden ferry boats and a sea shelf covered in green moss ... must have been that amazing Wiltshire cheese.

I'm immobilised. It's 9pm. I can't move but I am f***ing starving. I lie there and conjure up the best things to eat. I remember my friend's dad was a prisoner of war in Japan - he ate straw and drank hot water.

The POWs would sit around dreaming of great meals, driving themselves to give the most extreme descriptions of every dish - the smell, the taste, the colours and, best of all, how it was cooked.

My friend's dad said they were the best meals he ever ate. I am feeling the same way. I'm a bit of a meat-eater myself, but I love it all well done and crispy. I have always thought there are those who were born to eat meat and those who were not.

The phone rings. It's my mate Freddy. I tell him dinner's just not possible. I can't move. Now this man cares. He asks me what I would like to eat. I say: steak, mash and something green.

He tells me to listen out for my door bell in 25 minutes. It rings and, like magic, there's steak, mash and cabbage, plus a steak knife, and gravy so piping hot my hands have to move the bag around.

Where did it come from? THE RIVINGTON BAR AND GRILL has a deli service, and, f***, it works. I sit in bed feeling like the Queen of Sheba. My only complaint is that there was more than enough for two. Rivington Grill Bar Deli (as the takeaway is known) really hits the spot for delivery.

You can have even hampers to order, and it is all top-notch stuff. The menu at the restaurant and for takeaways is anything but modern. Dishes range from devilled kidneys on toast to nursery foods like fish fingers with mushy peas or steamed smoked haddock with poached egg.

Fantastic. I shall never have to go hungry again.

St John Bread and Wine
94-96 Commercial Street, E1 6L2