Telephone: 020 7300 5544
Address: 45 St Martins Lane, London WC2
Dinner for two, including wine and service, £80-£120
Prior to visiting Tuscan Steak, the new restaurant at Ian Schrager's painfully hip St Martins Lane hotel in London, I concluded that, were I to eat a good meal there and then say so in print, it would represent great maturity on my part. I was so appalled by Asia de Cuba and Spoon, the other restaurants at Schrager's London hotels - by their grimly over-conceptualised food, by their obscene prices, by the casual stupidity of the staff - that, unsurprisingly, the promise of another one to review had me reaching only for the inkwell full of poison the better to dip my nib. The question was, could I resist its lure?
Well no, at least not at first, though it must be said that my party was not exactly match fit. I'd had a crappy day and my companion, Kate, announced as she arrived that she was nursing an Olympic-quality case of PMT. All that said, Shrager's places do cry out to be kicked. The promotional material, for example, announced that at Tuscan Steak - branches of which already exist in Miami and New York - 'American beef would be featured'. Why? If you're going to start importing dead cow, what's wrong with Tuscan bloody beef, given the name and all? Or am I being too literal here?
And then there are the prices: the wine list that has nothing below £22 a bottle, the garlic bread at £8.50. Oh, and of course there's the Tuscan steak, by way of America: it was the most expensive single dish I have ever seen on a menu, listed at 65 - count them - 65 of your pounds sterling. There was a cheaper option of a 28-day-hung Aberdeen Angus. It cost a mere £40. Irritatingly, for two people ready to diss the place, we were then told - in classic Schrager speak - that the restaurant worked on 'a sharing concept'. Which in standard English means those steaks are for two. Thus the prices could be downgraded from crimes against humanity to mere acts of clumsy extortion.
No matter. There were always the starters. Kate had the crab and potato cake with a lemon and chive butter sauce at £8.50. She took a couple of mouthfuls and then squinted at me through a hormonal haze. 'It's really rather unpleasant,' she said. 'I'm not going to eat any more.' She was right; it was odd. It was as if the crab and potato hadn't been formally introduced and sat in layers, uncertain of each other. It also lacked any of the rich, fishy sweetness you expect from crab. My Tuscan antipasto at £12.50 was, if anything, worse: it was the kind of thing you would find on a wedding buffet and eat only out of a desire not to offend the bride and groom. There were a couple of dull bean salads, some thick-cut Parma ham and a few sunblushed tomatoes. You could have bought it all on the deli counter at Sainsbury's for a couple of quid. Apart from the hummus, which was genuinely disgusting, and would never be allowed into Sainsbury's. It was salty and granular and little else. God knows what this little cultural non sequitur was doing on a Tuscan plate.
So far, so bad. Now came the main course, the Aberdeen Angus beef. It arrived on a big wooden board, the T bone upended so that the down stroke of the 'T' pointed to the ceiling as though the dish were giving the finger to the room. It had been cooked rare, came pre-sliced for ease of sharing and was - damn it all - bloody marvellous. It wasn't the best steak I have ever eaten, but it was seriously close. Kate and I looked at each other as we chewed, our lips curling into a furious snarl. 'It's good, isn't it?' I said, bitterly. 'Yes,' she said, her jaw clenched. 'Damn good.' It had a rich, salty crust and was beautifully tender within. It was also more than enough for two.
Thankfully, a side dish of tomato and rocket salad at £4 arrived late and was nothing special. We had little room for pudding, so we shared a dish of roasted figs with honey ice cream. Oh sod it: that was also terrific, the delicately acid fruit breaking up on the spoon. As to the restaurant space, it was formerly a place called Saint M. Very little has been done to its dark wood cladding in the transformation, though a large stuffed bull's head now hangs on the wall to remind you of the noble beast you will soon help despatch.
So could I actually recommend it? Oh, I really don't think I could go that far; old habits die hard, you know. Yes, the beef is brilliant. (There are, incidentally, vegetarian dishes, if you don't appreciate bloody meat, though why you'd be in a restaurant called Tuscan Steak if you were a vegetarian is a mystery to me.) And the most fat-walletted among us might just about be able to argue that at £40 for two, the Aberdeen Angus beef is good value. But all in all, a restaurant costing this much should be able to deliver from the beginning of the menu to the very bottom and, on our night there, it simply didn't. So my advice is, despite the good meal I eventually had, don't go there. Oh well. It seems I'm not that mature after all.
Contact Jay Rayner at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
