STK, Aldwych

There are lots of rubbish steakhouses in London. One of my earliest posts was of an evening at Angus Steakhouse on Coventry Street, where I suspected I was going to have a terrible time and absolutely did, but in the end of course what I or any of the readers of my blog thought about the food at that awful place was of profound insignificance. Nine years on, Angus Steakhouse, and Steak & Co., and Black and Blue, and countless other terrible tourist dive steakhouses are still with us because they don't need anything so frivolous as good food, and good reviews, to make money. They just need a highly visible West End location, a huge number of visitors naive enough to be shaken down for their tourist dollar at least once, and a gross profit per dish that would make a 5-star hotel room service menu look like a school canteen.

Yes, there are a lot of rubbish steakhouses in London, and there always will be. STK, though, is not one of them. However much it looks at first glance like a Croydon nightclub (disclaimer: I have never been to a nightclub in Croydon, but I strongly suspect a lot of them look like STK), and however much they may court the Instagram crowd in the manner of places like Sketch with their signature lighting schemes and plush décor, where it matters the food offering is considered, classy, and generally worth the money being asked for it. Which is definitely not true of Sketch, take it from me.

Anyway, to STK. The first thing I do in any steakhouse, and I recommend you do the same - it's a great control variable, is order a martini. This came in a frozen glass (tick), with a twist (tick), was not too dry (tick) and was made with Bombay Sapphire (IMMEDIATE FAIL AND DISQUALIFICATION). In a world where Beefeater exists, I will never understand why anyone's house pour should be Bombay Sapphire - it's horrid stuff. Nevertheless, it was a cold martini, so there was still something to enjoy.

The house bread at STK is this bizarre thing. It's a large brioche bun, topped with blue cheese butter, alongside a little pot of bright green chimmichurri. None of it should work together, or ever has worked together historically as far as I know, and yet, you know what, it was quite nice. Sweet brioche, salty blue cheese butter, and a little dipping pot of herb and garlic. Yeah, it's weird dipping bread and butter into oil, and there was quite a lot of different flavours going on, but none of them were jarring. And how much more interesting, in the end, than the usual white roll.

But I imagine you'll be wanting to know what the steaks were like. First up, my Dedham Vale sirloin (dry aged to 28 days apparently, which I always think is the right amount of time to dry age steak). If you're used to the super-charred Basque style then the appearance of this rather timidly-grilled specimen may come as somewhat of a disappointment. However, through pinpoint seasoning and by virtue of the fact the steak itself was clearly high quality - powerfully flavoured and with a texture just the right side of tender - that I polished the whole thing off incredibly easily. Which anyone who knows me will tell you, is a rare thing indeed. The less said about a horrid "peppercorn sauce" that tasted of sugared wallpaper paste the better, although the red wine jus was quite nice.

USDA fillet came topped with a mushroom, because you could, and why the hell not, and was similarly seasoned and cooked perfectly accurately. As expected, and desired, the USDA steak was more about buttery mouthfeel and that addictive melty texture than the more distinct flavour of grass-fed cow, but this was still a Nice Steak. You'd hope so, too, for £39 for 200g of it, but that's USDA for you. The Dedham Vale was £26, which is fantastic value and the one I'd go for if I was to return.

Sides also acquitted themselves admirably. Mac & cheese was full of the good stuff, and with a lovely golden brown crust of grilled cheese on top. To be perfectly honest I barely had a taste of this before it disappeared, but I suppose that just shows you how good it was.

Fries were great, which is always a relief - crisp and dry and nicely seasoned. And broccoli with chilli, pine nuts and pecorino was classic combo done very well. So no complaints there, either.

It feels like damning with faint praise to say STK could have been a lot worse, but I don't mean that in a cynical way. A flashy imported US chain self-consciously occupying a prominent West End location, with an equal emphasis on clubbing and cocktails than steaks and service, it could so easily have been an utter car crash, falling inbetween two conflicting priorities and pleasing nobody. That even I, a cynical steak-obsessed food blogger with an aversion to late nights and loud music so extreme I come out in hives if I'm not in bed by 10pm, managed to enjoy my evening here is a testament to, despite appearances, a kitchen team that by and large know what they're doing and service (with the usual caveat that they knew I was reviewing) that didn't put a foot wrong. Swap out the Bombay Sapphire from the martinis and rework that peppercorn sauce and I'd find even more to like. But even in its current form, STK is quite the thing.

Postscript: As I occasionally try to do on the back of a comped invite, I went back to STK for lunch to sample a bit more of the menu, in this case hoping to try their burger. Steakhouse burgers are usually fantastic things - in good steakhouses at least - using the cheaper cuts of the dry-aged animals available on the full steak menu to make a luxurious high-end sandwich. As it turns out, though, STK do not do a burger, despite what their lunch menu from January would have you believe. So I ended up with a couple of wagyu sliders, which were fine, but not at all what I was after. So I'm afraid as a steakhouse that doesn't do a steakhouse burger, they lose a point. Service was still efficient, except the bill came not only with a space for extra service to be added (despite it being included already), but the card machine tried the same trick as well. And to that I ask - for the occasional numpty you manage to con out of an extra tip or two, is it really worth the aggro caused to all your other customers? Or indeed, another dropped point in a review...

6/10

I was invited for the main meal at STK and didn't see a bill, but paid for the sliders at lunchtime myself.

Cowboy Star, San Diego

Surely one of the most glorious incarnations of the restaurant, if you are a normal functioning human and enjoy the consumption of red meat and powerful cocktails, is the US Steakhouse. The first place to go looking for these of course has always been, and remains, New York; in a city that knows how to eat better than almost anywhere else, and with a long and happy history of all the ancillary things that make a good steakhouse (slick, old-timey service, plush leather banquettes and the reasonable assumption that steaks should only be served in sizes of "half a cow" upwards), the examples there are the best in the world, and are rightly world famous - Luger's, Keens, the Old Homestead; names steeped in tradition and romance, bastions of civility and luxury in a fast-changing world.

But while New York set the template on how to serve steak, they don't have the monopoly on steak itself, and so it stands to reason that wherever people care about dry-aged, premium cow, and wherever the supply of such will allow it, you will find restaurants taking the cue from the big apple. Some areas take longer than others to catch up - London took its sweet time but now we have Goodman and Hawksmoor and Gillray's and so things are a lot better than they used to be - but with Southern California not being the first place that comes to mind when you think of steak, San Diego's steakhouse culture only really kicked into first gear with the opening in 2008 of Cowboy Star. Fortunately for San Diegans, Cowboy Star is pretty much the only steakhouse you'd ever need anyway.

Décor is a clever fusion of New York tradition - leather booths, open kitchen, nice white tablecloths - and California style (plenty of woodwork and nice high "warehouse-y" ceilings). It feels as serious as it should do for a place charging $50 a main, but with an easy atmosphere thanks to inordinately friendly and capable service (not nearly as much as a given as it once was in the US) matched with that ever-present bright Californian sun.

Everything we had was great. This may not make for a particularly inspiring read, but it is undoubtedly true, especially regarding the gin martini which was served ice cold in a frozen glass and met every single criteria of the perfect martini. There's absolutely no better way of beginning a steak dinner than with a dry martini, but there's always the danger that a lesser example (warm or watery or containing shards of ice) can spoil things. Nothing to worry about on that front at Cowboy Star though.

The Steakhouse Burger is often an institution in itself; think of the Luger's stripped-back version with its huge ball of funky aged mince, or the Hawksmoor (UK) take which was the first time most Londoners (this one included) had any clue how good a burger could be. This isn't the "Ultimate", Cowboy Star's signature burger (which would have been my own choice), but in fact the lunch special "Bison burger" - leaner, gamier and served with roasted chillies. The meat had an incredible depth of flavour and was as loose and juicy as only the very most expertly built burgers can be, the white "cheddar" (I use the word loosely) binding it all together well and the bun having a great taste as well as holding together well. Nice fries too - fluffy inside and with a gentle crunch, rather like In'N'Out's.

I was that close to ordering a $65 bone-in 45-day aged ribeye for my own main but in the end common sense prevailed and I settled (!) for a $50 T-bone. This was a beautiful bit of meat and had been cooked incredibly well, with a nice defined "crust" with no burning or bitterness and a nice smooth pink interior. It was also nice to see such a varied list of steaks on offer - sourced mainly from the US from various ranches in California, Wyoming or Washington state, but also some luxurious Hokkaido Wagyu for a whacking $100 for 8oz. Which I'm sure is quite the thing - they let us gawp at it even if we didn't quite have the pockets for it (that's it on the left):

Steakhouse desserts are notoriously variable, and usually variations on the theme of cheesecake and ice cream, but at Cowboy Star were well worth the effort. Bread and butter pudding was a vast slab of a thing, golden-browned with a sugar crust and topped with rich chocolate ice cream, unsophisticated perhaps but undeniably enjoyable...

...while this strawberry chiffon cake was a far more "cheffy" affair, involving powerfully-flavoured strawberries teased into all kinds of interesting shapes and textures, topped off with a particularly lovely sour cream sorbet.

Understandably - and quite rightly - the T-bone formed the largest part of the bill, but was still pretty good value considering the quality of the offering, and didn't feel like a liberty. And actually $138.36 (once you've added on the practically more-or-less-compulsory 20% service charge) is a pretty reasonable figure to pay for a meal like this, especially as I say given the brilliant service (full disclosure: they comped me a martini, which may have been something to do with seeing me take photos, but may just be because they're like that) and whole silver-service steakhouse vibe.

So despite not being in New York, or even anywhere particularly notable for its beef production, Cowboy Star succeeds on every measurable criteria of a steakhouse and then some by just following the New York template as closely as makes sense in Southern California. I'm worried that this post is going to come across as too relentlessly gushy, as puffy as that strawberry meringue, but sometimes there is such a thing as a restaurant doing almost everything right, and it's probably better I just admit as much rather than inventing fault where there is none. I loved Cowboy Star, and if you are one of those fully-functioning humans I mentioned earlier, you will too.

9/10

The Burger at CUT at 45 Park Lane, Mayfair

The last time I visited a Park Lane restaurant and ate a burger costing over £25 it did not end well. The evening a friend and I spent in the Playboy Club, where we tried their miserable food and tried our best to keep it down, is still a topic of conversation all these years later, a shared moment of dining horror that has hardly lessened from the passage of time. The experience was so grim that I avoided "posh" burgers for a good while after, until I eventually realised it wasn't wagyu beef and truffle mayo I didn't like, it was cynical pricing and restaurants housed in hideous soul-crushing temples of misogyny. And fortunately, hideous soul-crushing temples of misogyny are fairly easily avoided. So with the trauma of the "Hef burger" now little more than a distinctly unpleasant memory, I booked for the signature offering at CUT at 45 Park Lane, hoping it would redeem the reputation of posh burgers everywhere.

The best place to start looking for a premium burger is, and has always been, the steakhouse. It makes sense that anywhere specialising in the sourcing and searing of beef would be able to easily turn their hand to mincing said beef and serving it in a seeded bun, and it further makes sense that the very best steakhouses - Goodman and Hawksmoor in London, Peter Luger's and the Strip House in New York City - with access to the best beef money could buy, would serve the very best burgers. And so it seemed likely that CUT at 45 Park Lane, with its moneyed clientele and focus on stunning imported USDA, would have as good a shot at the title as anyone.

Often a steakhouse burger is little more than a patty of ground beef in a bun - no salad, no cheese, often not even a slick of mayo or sauce. Peter Luger's go down this route, the confidence in their product bordering on arrogance, but when you have access to the best cow this particular food blogger has ever tasted, well, that confidence seems perfectly well-placed. It's fair to say that CUT are not a "no frills" operation, not by a long way. Even before the main course arrives diners are treated to some superb bubbly cheese straws, fantastic fluffy warm cheese gougère (perhaps on loan from the Alain Ducasse operation next door) and beautiful fresh pretzel bread which were so good I ate two of the tasty little buggers before I'd even finished my martini.

But you won't be here to read about pretzels or martinis. What about the burger? Well, overall this was an extremely enjoyable - if not flawless - meat sandwich. The beef itself, in using a Wagyu blend, had it seemed to me sacrificed a little of the flavour of the British and Irish grass-fed breeds for that lovely loose crumbly flesh, rich with marbled fat. Using Black Angus in the mix as well is presumably an effort to reintroduce a bit of funky taste, but I think it could have taken more of this, and less of the Wagyu. Still, what do I know. The tomato was (surprisingly) good even if the lettuce was a bit nothing-y, and the garlic mayo was a fantastic light texture even if there was ever so slightly too much of it.

I liked the poppyseed bun a lot, and it held together remarkably well considering everything that was going on inside. Personally I'm not a usually a fan of marmalades or chutneys in burgers (with the notable exception of bacon jam on very rare occasions) and I could have done without the "shallot-jalapeno marmalade" here, but Ogleshield cheese is, if you're absolutely determined not to use American processed, a very good option as Hawksmoor (and, since them, many others) will tell you, and still retains a good soft consistency even as it cools. Unlike, for example, cheddar. Never use cheddar in burgers. Never.

Service, as you might expect in this poshest of posh steakhouses, was immaculate, and is perhaps partly responsible for the fact I enjoyed the overall experience of eating at CUT more than I objectively appreciated the charms of the burger itself. I'd like to go back, in fact, to try some of the very attractive looking steaks presented as part of the CUT experience (whether or not you're too much of a cheapskate to "just" have a burger and a martini and get the bus home) and see if I don't bankrupt myself.

Because no, CUT is not cheap. It's not even "a bit punchy". It is gold-star, fully-paid-up, certificate-of-authenticity expensive, where a burger and fries a drink ended up costing £50. Is it really worth that kind of money? Well, no. But is anything? Perhaps there's never any justification for spending such numbers on food, but I'm not about to let silly things like logic and rationality get in the way of a good eat, and neither should you. After all, it could be worse - at least it's not the Playboy Club.

7/10

Romesco, San Diego

Back in what has firmly become my second city and home-from-home, San Diego, and a belated write-up of what is fast becoming my favourite restaurant there - Romesco, in Bonita. You may remember me waxing lyrical about the extraordinary Mision 19 in Tijuana last year, a world-class celebration of the finest Mexican food (and believe me, the competition in that category is quite fierce) from chef Javier Plascencia. Romesco actually predates the Tijuana joint by a few years, but is still the only Plascencia place in USA - all the rest are in his home town - so for Californians wanting to try innovative and exemplary Mexican food without negotiating a border crossing, it's a great place to start.

Which is odd, because on paper (literally, I mean the menu), Romesco is doing a lot of things very wrong. It calls its food Mexican-Spanish (or even "Mexiterranean", would you believe it), but has a vast, rambling list of dishes encompassing Greek salads, lasagne, risotto, tapas, tacos and steaks enough to strike the fear of God into anyone who's ever suffered at the hand of so many other unfortunate "fusion" restaurants. I'm usually the first to ridicule anywhere that claims it can cook, say, Malaysian, Thai and Chinese food to a competent level in the same kitchen but those cuisines at least all share the same subcontinent; how on earth would Mexican-Spanish be any more successful?

The answer, to everyone's great relief, not least my own, is a whole lot. Romesco dismisses worries about the oddness of its concept and geographical fuzziness with food that, sampled over two visits and at least two dozen dishes, is rarely less than stellar. Perhaps this success is down to the wise decision to largely keep the Spanish and Mexican elements (and American, and Greek, and Italian, and so on) distinct but separate, rather than attempting too many linguini tacos or chicken mole paellas. So despite being somewhat experimental, a tamarind margherita, for example, is unmistakeably Mexican - and very nice.

House bread (a French baguette, just in case they hadn't quite covered every single country in the world just yet) went remarkably well with pickled garlic (Lebanese? Syrian?), bouncy and crunchy and bright.

OK so maybe some dishes are literally Mexican-Spanish fusion after all. "Grandma's Tacos de Fideo" (I hope she doesn't want them back) were made with that noodly stuff the Catalans use, and also included Spanish chorizo, a rarity in this part of the world more used to the chilli paste (think Mexican n'duja). And very nice they were too.

Even better were the beef cheek tacos - no fancy fusion business here, just a great big glistening load of heavenly-rich beef, and a steamer full of those fresh masa flour casings that make Californians go all wobbly and sing the Star Spangled Banner.

Croquettas were, if we're going to be brutal, perhaps not quite as impressive as examples I've tried in London - using Cheddar cheese can't have helped - but a fluffy aioli perked them up a bit, and they were still enjoyed.

And then. And. Then.

And then the bone marrow sope.

Try and imagine - you won't be able to, but try - three golden brown, piping hot cylinders of roast bone containing a marrow so unbelievably smooth and rich and intense it was like eating the result of an experiment designed to distil the very best beef on the planet into a single mouthful. Each perched on a neat little circle of crisp cornmeal, and topped with a sprig of greaselessly deep-fried curly parsley, delicate enough to collapse into essence after little more than a hard stare.

We're not done yet. Next imagine a little bowl of chile de arbol sauce, with the haunting flavour of wood fires and citrus, presented alongside. Next to that, another bowl of what Romesco coyingly refer to as "beef glaze" but which goes nowhere near describing the wonder, the utter life-changing glory of this, God's own demiglace, a silky, heady reduction of red wine and beef stock so extraordinary simply knowing it exists makes me feel infinitely better about the state of humanity.

Then imagine combining all of the above and enjoying it as a single, divine entity. A symphony of animal and vegetable, taste and texture. Impossibly good.

Sorry I think I lost myself for a second there, but if there's one dish that was worth travelling 5,000 miles for it's that bone marrow sope, and I'm going to make it my mission to eat it on every future trip to San Diego.

Prawns - sorry, shrimp - in garlic butter were authentically Spanish, and perfectly cooked so as to retain a good firm texture. And even the desserts didn't disappoint, fluffy fresh churros served with a good homemade ice cream and creamy dulce de leche dip.

What else? Oh, the service - this, too, was something special, our waiter on our most recent visit (I'll namecheck - he was called Alfonso) a relaxed, seasoned career professional of a kind that exist hardly anywhere else in the world. And the icing on the churros was the bill - with the wine list being half price on Wednesdays we got a whole bottle of Californian Pinot Noir for about a tenner.

Looking back at the Romesco menu even now, after two trips, I still can't quite understand how it all works. This bonkers collection of influences and inspirations should have been, and heaven knows usually is, a disaster. Javier Plascencia is a supreme chef, of course, but being a skill in the kitchen is one thing; making a success out of a fideua taco is quite another.

But, in the end, who cares how it works. You need to know only this - it does work, and it's good value, and the staff are lovely and it's all just... just really, really good. Sorry, I've run out of words. I was thinking about the bone marrow sope again.

9/10



My flights to San Diego were very kindly provided by British Airways. Prices start around £717 return.