It certainly does what it says on the tin. Nick heads to Mayfair to try a steak that meats (sic) his expectations and more.
‘Never order a steak in a restaurant’, is one of my maxims. Most decent chefs are insulted that you would want to eat the least interesting thing on their menu.
However if the restaurant is all about steak, in fact prides itself on its carnal pleasures, then obviously it’s a different matter. Order away!
Meat & Wine Co comes from Australia where it has outposts in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra and Perth. It is obsessed, in a good way, with meat. Out there the steaks come only from hand-selected farms around Australia.
Meat & Wine Co UK is clearly not pretending to be anything other than what it is. A posh restaurant in Mayfair, where money is not a problem, serving superior meat and wine. I don’t know if there’s a vegan menu, but asking for it may get you a funny look.
Not that the staff are anything other than friendly. As we stagger in from the pouring rain, shedding water all over the front desk, as well as the floor, we’re greeted warmly. Warm too is the restaurant space.
I don’t know if one is allowed to call anything masculine anymore these days, but that’s how I’d describe the decor. The walls are lined with curtains of rope resembling natty dreadlocks. Colours are muted. It’s a bit of a moneyed man cave.
On the way through you can’t help but notice the chill cabinets full of dry-ageing meat, they’re a feature to be appreciated so we stop and look. Big pieces of meat are put into a specialised refrigerator for a minimum of four weeks in order to draw out moisture and intensify flavour.
At Meat & WIne Co they take this process further by encasing the meat with infused butter for further ageing. Sealing the meat from oxygen in this way makes the eventual flavour less ‘dry agey’, and in this month’s case the beef dripping butter used has been infused with porcini mushroom. Previous seasonal flavours have been Robusta & Arabica coffee, fresh honey & thyme, truffle, and black garlic.
And the wine? Bottles are everywhere. Some, presumably empty, make up ‘walls’ others reside in temperature controlled cabinets. A Coravin system ensures wines by the glass are almost as good as if from a freshly opened bottle.
We decide we can’t just bite straight into the steak, so try some starters. Deep fried calamari, cucumber, onion, lemon with a spiky nam jim sauce is pretty good, the batter is properly crispy from fresh oil, although the squid is a tad tough. I’d lose the cucumber slices though, they look a bit naff.
We prefer the short rib croquettes made from slow cooked beef. Lovely intense flavour and a fine crunchy exterior. Three to a plate though, so there was some argument as to who got to eat the last one, a dispute finally settled by a bit of messy division.
So, the steak. It’s ribeye, by the way, and comes cooked medium rare as requested and ready sliced on a board, accompanied by a bushel of fat chips and some chunks of dressed Little Gem lettuce. Which is all you want, really. Sauces are available.
The steak is truly excellent, butter soft but still with sufficient bite and chew. The rather fearsome looking steak knives are very sharp, but aren’t needed.
I find it just needs a slight dusting of salt to really bring out its lusciousness. In places like Spain good steak is always served with a bit of (preferably) rock salt on top. It does something magical.
The fat is meltingly wonderful too; in some ways I often prefer good fat to the actual meat. Fat this fine, cooked this well, is a sinful pleasure to be savoured (but not every day if you want to live a reasonably long time).
The chips can’t be faulted either- golden, crispy and fluffy on the inside. The lettuce is just lettuce of course with a yoghurty dressing, but its simple cool freshness partners very well with the meat and its juices. We eat every scrap of the meat and blot up juice with the last of the chips.
It’s a fairly filling meal, but room is still found for an excellent creme brulee with a ginger snap biscuit, whipped mascarpone and lemon balm topping, plus a classic Sticky Date Pudding – date sauce, candied walnuts and fior di latte ice-cream.
I still won’t be ordering steak in restaurants, but when I do fancy a steak then Meat & Wine is where I’ll go. It’s not a Steakhouse, it’s a Steakpalace.
17 Curzon Street
Mayfair, London W1J 5HU
themeatandwineco.co.uk