CUT: THE MUSTARD?

Cut to the chase: It's a Steakhouse. It's expensive. Rich people and Americans will love it. (Cheque to the usual place please).

Oh. Ok.

Much as I'd like to believe Wolfgang Puck has always wanted to open a restaurant in London and isn't it just wunnerful with your history and I'm actually thinking of buying a house and sending my kids to school here and the weather, just love your weather etc.etc. Much as I'd like to believe it I just can't. Let's face it: not only is the weather crap here but CUT is really just another branch of an ever-expanding franchise in yet another tony location

This one is located in a narrow space on the ground floor of some sort of boutique-like annex of the Dorchester Hotel. It’s all (presumably) hideously expensive with hard, reflective surfaces and heavy furniture. Surroundings designed to confound simple folk like myself but one in which people like hedge fund managers – there’s alot around these parts - will feel right at home.

There's a definite Siberia in this restaurant, situatedt right at the back, to which I was inevitably led and seated so that the other sad-sack single diner had a nice view of my back. I had a view of the wall. Avoid.

On a sort of mezzanine floor overlooking the dining room there’s a bar where I could only imagine the fun people were having but could certainly enjoy the sound system blasting out hits of the 70’s. David segueing into Al segueing into Marvin.

Although it’s ostensibly a steakhouse the menu has pleanty choice with even a few options for vegetarians - although if you are one of those so-blessed you may ponder upon on your choice of dining venue when you see mushrooms coming in at £19. They are Masala Wild Mushrooms though. In the end, though, it’s still a steakhouse and it seemed perverse and not a little bit dumb to order anything but a piece of beef.

Before that though there were some nibbles: nice, crumbly cheese straws, warm cheesy gougères and some toughish bread.

A starter of Crab and Lobster “Louis” was an assemblage of lumps of lobster, white crab meat, toms and microgreens – like a sort of refined seafood cocktail. I couldn’t detect any of the advertised horseradish and it was a little underseasoned for my taste but it was a light and pleasant enough dish and the shellfish tasted nice.

There’s a decent selection of steaks available and there was the now obligatory show ‘n’ tell of the primo cuts. Foolishly, as it turned out, I spurned my usual “Stupidly Big Steak on Bone” MO and went for 6oz of Australian Wagyu. Yours for an arm AND a leg – I suspect it hadn’t travelled cattle class from down under. Super-sizing it with £10 of Foie Gras was just showing off.

Whoever’s manning the grill here knows exactly what they’re doing as the smallish lump of beef – it was a shock to see what 6oz of steak actually looks like – was perfectly cooked and
looked bloody great (mate).

Unfortunately, it had about as much taste as your average Ocker. Whether I should requested it cooked less rare; whether the odd seasoning covering the outside of the meat was killing the flavour; whether I’ve developed a tin mouth, I’ll never know. What I do know is that it was one of the more disappointing steaks I’ve eaten in a restaurant. So much so I hardly noticed that the FG had been overcooked.

The sides were more enjoyable though. A large tower of Tempura Onion Rings were light and crisp although its height had been enhanced by judiciously filling the bottom of the cup with the onion ring equivalent of 'bits'.

Fries were light and crisp although they’d been cut from unpeeled spuds (quite common in the US) – just made for dipping in an anaemic-looking but fine tasting béarnaise.

An off-menu Ice Cream selection was a metaphorical shrug of a desert but I liked the accompanying gooey chocolate cookie as well as the ones which came with my coffee.

Wines were just as eye-gougingly expensive as the food which is to be expected – there are very few reasonably priced wines to be found in London restaurants. Service was ultra-smooth and never missed a beat. As a whole though the experience left me underwhelmed. To be fair I feel this way about the majority of new places and find myself returning instead to my old favourite haunts.

To be honest if all you’re after is a good steak and are not fussed about dining at bling factor 50 then one of the established London Steakhouses – Goodman is but a 15 minute stroll away - would be a better choice. If you do not partake of the cow and have plenty of dosh CUT may just suit the bill.

JW STEAKHOUSE: MISTAKEN

Is cooking a good steak really that difficult? Are there that many obstacles to getting a juicy slab o’ meat on your plate? In my world all you need is some decent, well-hung beef (huh huh huh…he said “hung”). It should be left to come to room temperature. Maybe salted a little beforehand and the moisture dabbed off. A griddle pan heated until very hot. The steak whacked on for a minute or two, then turned. Maybe the fat crisped up a bit. Then into a low oven to rest. And rest. And rest.

Recently I tried another technique, where the steak is cooked in a frying pan in plenty of butter. The finished result looked great but the steak tasted a bit “stewed”. Obviously this methods needs someone with more cooking chops than I possess. Probably more than was evident from the kitchen of the new steakhouse JW er, Steakhouse in the Grosvenor House.

Like that other disappointing US based chain, Palm (of which I said I would never speak of, damn) JW seems to have a problem with cooking steaks to order, well mine in any case. When asked to cut into my signature “Tomahawk” rib eye to check the doneness I saw very little of the medium-rareness which I had requested. I did a bit more searching and eventually the waitress thought it best to redo the whole thing.

One of the cardinal rules of cooking steak is always to slightly undercook it as a) it may go on cooking for a bit and b) it’s easy enough to rescue if people want it cooked more. Luckily we had also gone for a Strip Steak which was close enough to how we wanted it.

The blurb for JW had said they would be using USDA Prime Beef but the “Prime” bit was missing from the descriptions on the menus so who knows what grade it was. The high prices certainly suggested that someone was benefitting from the deal. The steak itself was ok but no more. The Tomahawk too, when it eventually came, was just average: under hung, not very interesting. They had managed to get a decent colour on it though.

All the supporting acts were mediocre. The room was pretty dreadful: a huge cavernous space made worse by having just a few tables occupied and by playing a bizarre mixture of eighties power pop.

Deep-fried Calamari had decent squid but the coating was too thick and tasted of oil. Onion rings were solid and came in a nasty batter. Creamed Spinach had taken the description to heart (the spinach was literally “creamed”). Chips? Well I’ve had worse but I’ve had plenty of better ones. Gloopy Béarnaise was left untouched.

More gripes. Well, my dining companion Gary knows his vine and picked out something which he thought offered reasonable VFM. Unsurprisingly (to him) it wasn’t available and the opportunity to up sell by the restaurant was too good to miss. We got one of the cheaper ones on offer.

The Marriott group have certainly got the money so how have they got things so half-assed with this “me-too” operation? As I talked about in my post about Bar Boulud you need to get the details right and to do that you need people who know about such things. People who are passionate about Beef. JW Steakhouse definitely seems to be missing the right people.

Nothing that can’t be remedied, of course, although god knows what they could do with that room – move out and turn it into flats? Certainly on their current showing JW Steakhouse won’t be causing the likes of Goodman and Hawksmoor any sleepless nights.

PRINCESS GARDEN: DIM SUM DOWTOWN

London has a Hell of a lot of restaurants, 10,000 + of them, I think, So, even with DH’s capacity for eating out, it would still be a pretty mean feat to exhaust all the possibilities.

However, in two areas of dining, we are beginning to run out of options. Fish & Chips is one, of course, as DH have eaten at most of London’s chippies worthy of note and many unworthy ones too. Also, places for a decent dumpling as our love of Sunday Dim Sum, particularly after an over indulgent Saturday night, has left us scratching our heads as we search for new places to go.

Princess Garden in Mayfair was the suggestion of one of HP’s colleagues who is originally from Hong Kong and we pitched up at Midday as per usual to find the place empty and the staff milling around with a bored look in their eyes. All this made the manager’s question as to whether we had a reservation seem a bit strange, that is until two minutes after we were shown to our table and a steady flow of seeming regulars trickled in until the whole place was heaving.

Dumpling prices came in at around £2.80 a time and our order for twelve assorted fried, steamed and baked barely raised the waiter’s eyebrow with only the additional order of half a roast duck making him give us a quizzical look. We like duck with our dim sum, so shoot us.

It was not a good start. Cold pork puffs and a “wild pork delight” did little to make us think this would be a worthwhile way to spend a Sunday lunchtime, but things soon began to pick up as the excellent steamed dumplings began to arrive. With enough of a misshape to confirm that they had not come out of a catering pack, each dumpling was piping hot with just the right amount of bite to the dough and filled with fresh, well flavoured ingredients where you could taste the main event. Har Gau and Sui Mai were both spot on, but it was simple scallop and asparagus dumplings and pea shoot dumpling which had us cutting the third portion with surgeon like precision so no one could be accused of eating more than the other.

Frying showed an excellent hand too, with both cuttlefish balls and taro croquettes opening to reveal a hot filling in a greaseless casing. The roast duck was as good as we have had in some time, excellent crispy skin covering a layer of fatty meat and then moist flesh. Not cheap at £15 for a half duck, but worth the prices and effort to reduce the bones to sawdust. Minus points however for the sauce of duck stock, which had been laced with MSG and had both of our hearts banging out African rhythms on the inside of our chests for the next few hours

However, it was the final dish that realy made us both take notice. Cheung Fun can often be nothing but cold sludgy dough with little of interest in side to make eating the slimy casing worthwhile. Here, the sauce served on the side, the dough was light and the filling, well-flavoured cuttlefish wrapped in a crisp egg pancake to give texture. So often this is the one dish to be left on the table, here it was cleared to the last piece.

Location and quality means that this is not a Chinatown cheap option and our bill including tea and service came to £63, but while it lacks the inventiveness of some of the newer arrivals in town, Princess Garden makes a useful alternative to Royal China and another interesting addition to the DH list when only Dim Sum will do.

Any other suggestions more than welcome

GOODMAN: BENNY & BEEF

Despite the availability of great Beef, London still suffers from a dearth of good places to eat it, particularly in the form known as the Steak House. Yes, I know it’s more of an American institution but there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to do it properly over here.

The concept, for want of a better word, is pretty straightforward: decent, well-hung meat, butchered into thick steaks and cooked at a fearsomely high temperature for a short time, seasoned generously then allowed to rest…and rest. Served with good chips and some greenery on the side together with some sauces, Béarnaise preferably. A list of classic cocktails – no molecular mixology, please – some beer and wine. Oh and maybe some desserts which will be unnecessary but you’ll have them anyway. Instead what do we get ? Sloppily-made cocktails, underhung , badly butchered beef, cooked with little care, nasty wines and a big bill at the end.

Anyway, the latest place to try and fill this yawning gap is Goodman in Mayfair. It’s part of a big chain of Moscow-based Steak Houses and presumably will make the large number of Russian expats feel right at home.

Before getting intimately involved with large lumps of protein, however, we found ourselves just down the road for a glass or two in Terroirs, a new Wine Bar near Trafalgar Square. Like Steak Houses there’s not nearly enough Wine Bars in Town: somewhere you can go and get a glass or two of decent wine and a bite of something.

Initially, things looked promising. On a Friday evening in a part of London’s West End where most hostelries were mobbed and somewhat rowdy, Terroirs stood out as an oasis of middle-class calm, selling wine and small plates to an older impeccably-behaved crowd. However, the execution, like (it pains me to say) a lot of things in this city, was a bit half-arsed. After spending an age (you really don’t want to know why) getting to a point where we had a carafe of warm white wine, £7.50 plus service seemed a lot of money to pay for some Duck Scratchings that were really Duck crumbs, a few Olives and some anchovies. Getting the bill was pretty tortuous too. Still, it may just have been an off-night and it’s probably the best of a bad bunch in tourist central.

Back to the main event. Before they were open, Goodman, from the outside appeared rather chain-like but once inside it actually grew on me. They’ve managed to get that clubby feel of the classic US Steak House off pat: all dark wood and leather banquettes although some nice crisp white napery would have added a touch of class.

It’s a pleasingly uncomplicated menu with a decent list of starters to distract you while your cow is cooked. HS’s Caesar Salad looked a bit desultory. The croutons weren’t great and I’m not sure what slices of bacon/pancetta were doing in there but he seemed to enjoy it and really liked the dressing. Likewise my Beef Carpaccio which looked like it had been pre-plated but they’d at least allowed it to come to room temperature so that you could actually taste the beef which was decent There was a bit too much lemon but it didn’t stop me cleaning my plate with the excellent bread.
If you’re not in the mood for a steak (and if not, what on earth are you doing here ?) there’s some fish dishes, Burgers, Lamb and the like. For normal people the range of Steaks is actually quite small but we’re told that the list will be er…beefed up later on. For now you get a choice of Aussie or USDA wet-aged beef in 350g or 400g sizes (250g for the fillet). You get to examine the raw material beforehand and it all looked nice and thick and well-marbled.

I was told my USDA Rib-Eye was best cooked medium-rare. As it turned out it was prepared more towards the rare side but was good nevertheless. They’ve got a Josper grill in the kitchen and the result is that the meat gets an almost smoky-tasting char on the outside. That and the extra fat that you get in a rib-eye adds to the great taste as well. Not up there with the best dry-aged grass fed varieties but a very honourable performance.

The Aussie Strip was a decent-looking piece of meat as well. Although requested rare it came more medium done. It too, had the same good char as the Rib-Eye but the flavour didn’t really match – it was comparatively uninteresting to eat. Chips were good and DS was more than happy with his Creamed Spinach topped with Gruyere.

From our choice of sauces the Béarnaise had a good tarragon tang and was suitably wobbly, the less said about the Goodman steak sauce the better (as HS says: a restaurant’s eponymous sauce is something best avoided).

In true Steak House stylee we finished off with some totally unnecessary Cheesecake and Ice Cream (homemade) and apart from some odd-tasting Pistachio it was all very enjoyable and made us feel ever-so-slightly queasy for having eaten so much which is usually the aim of our dinners out.

I don’t think Goodman will oust either of our current fave places for a good steak in the capital: Quo Vadis and Hawksmoor, but given that the staff actually seem to give a damn - as borne out by long discussions with waiter Crispin and manager David – I think they’re heading in the right direction and we look forward to when they get some grass-fed British beef that will be aged onsite in the restaurant’s meat locker.