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After hearing that it was the best steak in London, we decided to indulge in dinner at Goodman Mayfair. As I’m sure you know, we rate Hawksmoor as the best steak in London, but in the interests of fairness man and van teddington we thought we’d see what all the fuss was about. man and van teddington
We had booked a day ahead and upon arriving, were lead through the main part of the restaurant (a large school dining room kind of affair with booths and lots of open plan things) towards a dining room at the back. This certainly proved to be a good thing – the lighting was a lot less severe and we were out of the general flow of foot traffic. Around us were leather padded chairs and the whole room had the feel of being in a well appointed gentleman’s study.
We chose a bottle of 2008 Delta Pinot Noir (from Marlborough, New Zealand) to start with. This is not an overly complex wine. It has a light black cherry and spice nose which is followed onto the palate with low tannins and some plum fruit. We’ve man and van teddington enjoyed this wine before, and not happy to let a good thing get away on us, we added a second bottle to take us through the entire meal.
Dan decided to start with the chicken liver and fois gras pate served man and van teddington with onion jam and some toasted brioche. The pate was a lovely light pink colour with a fine “rind” of jelly, was not chilled and remained very smooth to spread. The caramelised onion jam was marvellously sweet and had a slight coffee note to it – obviously made with very good quality balsamic vinegar. It seems there is never enough brioche man and van teddington with these dishes, and this proved true for the amount of pate on the plate.
I chose the beef carpaccio, basil cress, shaved man and van teddington parmesan, aged balsamic and olive oil. It was a mouthful to order – man and van teddington but definitely worth the effort. The acidity from the lemon juice (which was liberally covering man and van teddington the beef) played wonderfully with the aged balsamic (which had gentle malty chocolate notes and a defined lack of acidity). There were some crunchy peppercorns thrown in to surprise and the top quality beef provided a melt-in-the-mouth happiness that I wasn’t honestly expecting. The beef was wonderfully presented and tasted just as good. The trick here is loads of parmesan and it has to be freshly shaved. There was loads – and it was freshly cut.
We settled in for some people watching and drained the first bottle of wine at this stage (time for number two). It was about 7pm and the place was starting to fill up – so we had plenty of people wandering about to entertain us from our nicely protected table for two. With a flourish, our mains were brought to a side table and then our waiter served them to us. I can’t help but think this double-handling of the plates is a bit of a waste of time, however.
Dan went for a 500g Bone-in Sirloin cooked rare. They cook their beef using a Spanish Josper barbecue oven – and the beef had excellent charcoal man and van teddington lines and an aroma that immediately set the mouth watering. The meat was warm all the way through whilst maintaining a good rare colour into the middle. But it just doesn’t taste overly meaty! This was aged USDA corn fed (which apparently gives the meat a bit of sweetness) man and van teddington beef – and maybe this was the reason. Maybe it was because it was all the way from Nebraska… however you look at it, this is not better man and van teddington than Hawksmoor.
I went for a 600g Bone-in Rib of UK Devon grass fed aged Red Beef. None of this foreign man and van teddington meat for the likes of me! The crust was salty and charred nicely. Whilst I ordered man and van teddington it rare, I felt there were parts that were more medium than I would have liked (of course, it’s tricky to prevent this with the bone still in). My meat was easy to cut, was tender in the mouth and had a fine marble grained element of fat that tasted very rich and substituted nicely for the bone marrow that I have become accustomed to when dining at Hawksmoor. Like Dan, I agree that this meat is just not as good as Hawksmoor. Maybe it’s the different aging times – or maybe the different breeds man and van teddington of meat… I just don’t know.
We shared some green beans with shallots. man and van teddington The beans weren’t too greasy and had a good