JW Steakhouse gives Hawksmoor, Goodman, Cut et al a run for their money
By Alex Larman, published on 5 October 2011
Some of my friends – of both sexes, I should add, because otherwise this seems terribly male – have a certain code that they use. This is ‘men who like steak will always find a steakhouse’. The actual definition of this is a sort of GCSE-level psychology, whereby those people who enjoy various activities are always likely to gravitate to those pursuits, whether or not it was their original or explicit intention. Thus the desire ends up being father to the action. However, in many a literal case, this is true as well. My friends being, on the whole, a hearty and adventurous sort of bunch tend to enjoy the sort of exquisitely cooked, beautifully presented steaks that make for an excitingly carnivorous meal, and who am I to deny their fleshy wants?
Thus it was that my meat-eating mate Jamie and I recently found ourselves heading down to the JW Steakhouse in the august surroundings of the Grosvenor House hotel. JW Steakhouse, for the uninitiated, is a worldwide group that prides itself on offering the best steaks in any given city, and the ones in London are certainly magnificent – not bad, given that the nearby competition includes Goodman, Hawksmoor and now Wolfgang Puck’s establishment, Cut. However, from the moment that you enter the clubby, wood-panelled interior – clearly modelled on New York establishments – you know that you’re in good hands, even down to the blackboard showing which particular cuts of meat are available. Most of these cuts of meat, it should be noted, are exceptionally large – 700g is pretty much the minimum, and if you’re the kind of person who relishes the charge to order a kilo of steak, this is pretty much your ideal destination.
Starters are pleasant, if something of a marker point to the eventual destination. Smoked salmon was well garnished and had a nicely sweet-sour taste to it, and Jamie reported enjoying the tuna tartar very much. However, we were both champing at the bit in anticipation of the magnificent steaks, which proved to be very special indeed. I had the house specialty of the ‘Tomahawk’ rib eye, served on the bone and weighing in at a mighty 32oz. (The bone itself could well have been used as an offensive weapon.) Garnished with some excellent béarnaise sauce and served with fine, crunchy frites, this was about as good a piece of cow as I can remember having. Jamie ordered something similarly huge and delicious, and for a good while, little could be heard from our table except the sound of companionable munching and happy slurping from an excellent 2009 bottle of Mendoza Malbec.
Eventually, we cleaned our plates and, acknowledging our consumption, opted to share one of the signature puddings, the Bettie’s Bread Pudding, a sumptuous concoction that makes the average English bread pudding (even the ones from Yorkshire) seem like a very pedestrian beast indeed. No doubt containing a day’s supply of calories, fat and all things nice that are so terribly bad for you, it was a pleasure to end a meal this excellent in such an unashamedly decadent way.
So, JW’s is a more than worthy addition to the London steakhouse scene, a pleasure from start to finish. And, if for some reason you’re too cowardly to order the Gotterdammerung of meat that we sampled, rest assured that there are smaller options available as well. Although quite why you’d want to try them is beyond us.
JW Steakhouse, 80 Park Lane, London W1K 7LT, Tel: +44 20 7399 8460, Email: info@jwsteakhouse.co.uk
JW Steakhouse gives Hawksmoor, Goodman, Cut et al a run for their money
JW Steakhouse is a worldwide group that prides itself on offering the best steaks in any given city, and the ones in London are certainly magnificent – not bad, given that the nearby competition includes Goodman, Hawksmoor and now Wolfgang Puck’s establishment, Cut.
