Watch Smithfield Culture Code: It's a work-hard, play-hard kind of place - whether your into bars of museums, take a look at what's on offer

Watch Smithfield Culinary Code: Vegetarians beware: Smithfield is home to London’s biggest meat market - check out what's on the menu

OK, OK, so Smithfield doesn’t really exist; you won’t find it on the Tube and its EC1 postcode is shared with Clerkenwell and the City. It’s off-grid, but its cool coordinates are firmly fixed. Especially if you’re a foodie or a clubber. Or both.

“I loved seeing the carcasses hanging in the market,” says Fergus Henderson, cook-proprietor of St John. Control your shudders. Henderson has pioneered nose-to-tail eating: nothing is wasted in his award-winning restaurant. Hearts, trotters, brains — all sensationally delicious. And it’s pronounced Saint John, not SinGin, a blow to braying food snobs. “This was the natural place for my restaurant, but it was a brave, some said stupid, choice.” That was 13 years ago. St John hasn’t changed but Smithfield has. Now, as then, the interior is plain white modernist and the menu is all about making the most of meat (just like its offshoot, St John Bread and Wine, in Spitalfields). His favourite dish is also mine: salty roasted bone marrow on toast. It’s always available — a firm, grounding favourite in a fickle, flighty world. “We were the first real restaurant around. Before, when the offices closed, it was a ghost town,” says Henderson.

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Near by John Torode has made Smiths of Smithfield the perfect place for City types to break their fast and make early-morning deals. Smiths is four floors of exposed brick, New York-style. If you fancy fish more than meat, try nearby Saki. Newly opened, this sleek, dark shrine to all things Japanese features a stylish dining room and sushi counter, cocktail bar, deli and food boutique. If, after all that, you want something sweet, curl up with sachertorte at Kipferl, London’s only Austrian café.

Smithfield still works hard; the market goes all night and there’s always a trader awake, judging by all those blazing office windows. Now it plays hard too. The only suits you’ll see at Turnmills nightclub are rubber. Or denim. Or leather. Daddy of the club scene, it was the first to get a 24-hour licence. Somewhat bigger, and newer, is Fabric, with three rooms and its own record label.

The area’s biggest presence is the Barbican. Designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon and Grade II listed, it encompasses little known private gardens, the Museum of London and, of course, the entertainment complex. It’s a self-contained style citadel, loved as much as Trellick Tower by architects and designers. The tower apartments offer unparalleled views for reasonable prices. Ears pop as the lift shoots up 30 floors. A rarely available three-bedroom triplex with three terraces is on sale now for £1.85 million. Prices fall the lower you go.

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