Sophie's Steakhouse & Bar
Telephone: 020-7352 0088
Address: 311-313 Fulham Road, London SW10
Rating: 13/20

· Open Mon-Fri, 12 noon-12pm; Sat, 11am-12pm; Sun, 11am- 11pm. All major credit cards. Wheelchair access & WC.

Notting Grill Bar & Restaurant
Telephone: 020-7229 1500
Address: 123A Clarendon Road, London W11
Rating: 14/20

· Open Mon-Thurs, 6.30pm-10.30pm; Fri, 6.30pm-11.30pm; Sat, 12 noon-4pm, 6.30pm-11.30pm; Sun, 12 noon-4pm. All major credit cards. Wheelchair access (no WC)

I still remember the finest steak that I have ever eaten. It was a classic bistecca alla fiorentina, in a restaurant called Il Bucco in Rome in 1986. (It is still there, but its style and its steaks are shadows of their former selves.)

The meat was from a breed known as chianina, from the owner's estate in Tuscany. It was, perhaps, two centimetres thick. It flopped languidly over the edge of the plate, its surface darkened here and there where the flame had touched it. The meat fell away from the gentlest pressure of the knife, and tenderness was next to tastiness.The flavour of meat gushed from each mouthful, a primal combination of husky juices glossy with fat.

I will say right away that I did not find anything comparable at either Notting Grill, Antony Worrall Thompson's new incarnation on the site of his old Wiz, or Sophie's Steakhouse & Bar. The eponymous Sophie is the scion of another notable restaurant family, for she is the daughter of Jeremy Mogford, founder of the Browns chain. Indeed, as Fitzpatrick observed over her grilled burger, "This is a kind of Brown's for the 21st century."

Sophie's is a quintessential modern eatery - a combination of French brasserie and American diner; casual, relaxed, friendly, classlessly metropolitan. And that goes for the food, too: roast vegetables and then Black Angus burger for Fitzpatrick; Cornish crab salad and 10oz contre filet (aka sirloin) and chips for me.

They were what they were - McDonald's for grown ups. The crab was fresh and nicely served. The roasted vegetables were roasted, with a splash of balsamic vinegar. The burger was a massive turret of not very tasty meat, mixed with a whole lot of business better off in a steak tartar. The steak was correctly cooked, but dense and curiously watery in flavour. The chips were more french fries than chips. But the green salad passed muster.

The chips at Notting Grill were at the opposite end of the scale from those at Sophie's. They are described as "chunky" on the menu, but that doesn't do justice to the fubsy hunks of golden potato dished up. While french fries are small amounts of carbohydrate holding large amounts of fat, the beauty of the English chip, of which the Notting Grill version is an extreme example, lies in the crisp, fat-laden crust contrasting with the floury, fluffy interior. Notting Grill had got this antithesis absolutely right, but in my opinion the french fry is better suited to a steak.

Mr Worrall Thompson's steaks are "100% Aberdeen Angus" and "hung for 28 days". (In the case of Sophie's, the steaks are "naturally raised and individually selected from farms in Scotland and Northern Ireland" and are also "aged for 28 days". Whatever is going on in the butcher's employed by Ms Mogford and Mr Worrall Thompson, it's not having that much effect on the end result. Twenty-eight days on the bone in the chiller cabinet should give a steak a certain melting tenderness, particularly if the proportion of fat to fibre is as it should be.

The Notting Grill 9oz sirloin had more flavour than the Sophie's version, but still it was inferior to Il Bucco's magic meat. On the other hand, the Bearnaise sauce to go with it was textbook stuff, the green salad was a rare beauty, a delightful mix of leaves well dressed (as at £3.50 it should be), and a first course of the smoked salmon from Machin's of Henley-on-Thames was as good as I have ever eaten.

Neither steakery was cheap. The list price for the 10oz contre filet at Sophie's was £14.95; £17.50 for the 9oz sirloin at Notting Grill. In fact, Notting Grill is the more expensive joint all round. Dinner for five worked out at £36 a head, although I should add that we drank two bottles of very toothsome Firestead Pinot Noir, which at £28.95 a bottle represented one of the better value drinks on a very oddly structured list. Lunch at Sophie's was £30 a head, perhaps because the very decent Petit Syrah from Australia was a more modest £18.50 a bottle.

At the end of this double header I came to what was, for me, a melancholy conclusion: prime meat, whether of 10oz, or even 9 oz, is just too much. It may be age, it may be satiation, it may be that I am turning vegetarian after all, but round about two-thirds of the way through both steaks, I suddenly got tired of eating. I finished them, of course, because I was brought up not to waste anything. But still, it makes you think.