277 Upper Richmond Road, London SW15 (020 8788 7733), and 108 Blythe Road, London W14 (020 7610 4578).
Meal for two, with wine, £80
I recently came across an advert in my local Yellow Pages for a restaurant in Croydon which offers steaks 'as big as you like'. For example, they promise T-bones from '500g to 1,500g'. What's that then? Nearly 3.5lbs? Presumably they lop off the hooves and the tail and put the rest on the plate. I am guessing a few of you find this notion repulsive. Personally, I found the idea of a huge steak very appealing indeed. I have just returned from an eating trip to the US, where I managed to try a whole bunch of things, some of them very good, some of them flawed but intriguing, some to be classified as 'cruel and unusual punishment'. The one thing I didn't get, however, was a good steak. And American steaks really are among the very best in the world: thick cut, with a great char and proper flavour, as proof that the beast lived well. I am told this is because they have a far more liberal approach to the use of hormones and antibiotics over there, but frankly when the beef is that good I don't care. They can feed the cow on Red Bull and vodka chasers for all I care, if the result is as impressive a piece of meat as I have enjoyed in the steakhouses of New York.
So I hankered after a steak, and Croydon looked to be cow-bum heaven. Except the advert wasn't entirely convincing. It spoke of 'cosmopolitan cuisine', which usually suggests entirely the opposite. The menu on the website also seemed rather dated - chicken cordon bleu, anyone? - as indeed did the website itself: they are still wishing all their patrons a Merry Christmas. Perhaps time simply moves a little slower in Croydon.
Instead, I went to Popeseye in Putney, southwest London (there is another branch near Olympia). The proposition at Popeseye - a Scottish term for rump steak - is very simple: you can have anything you like as long as it's steak, chips and salad. Does this sound familiar? It should do. Last year London became home to not one, but two outposts of apparently legendary steakhouses - Le Relais de Venise l'Entrecote of Paris and L'Entrecote Cafe de Paris of Geneva, both of which first opened their doors many decades ago. I went to the former and thought of it not much at all: mangy salad, flaccid chips and a meagre serving of steak at a high price. The problem for me wasn't the idea, it was the execution.
By contrast, Popeseye gets it right. I will go further. It is for me the holy grail, a place which serves steaks to match those I have tried on the other side of the Atlantic. It helps, I think, that there is a little more flexibility here than at those other two l'entrecote joints up in town. At Popeseye there are three types of steak on offer - rump, sirloin and fillet - in a range of sizes from 6oz to 30oz. Prices rise accordingly, from low teens for the small portions (for those whose hearts really aren't in it and who don't deserve to be here), to just north of £20 for the 12oz steaks, topping out at around £45 for 30oz - just shy of 2lbs - of fillet. That's a very big fillet. All beef is grass-fed Aberdeen Angus and properly hung.
And properly cooked. My 12oz sirloin was almost 2in thick, had a fine char and was served rare, as requested. My companions, being ladies and not understanding the universal truth that it is a good marbling of fat which gives a proper steak its flavour, both ordered smaller fillets. I shall forgive them this, not least because these, too, were very good. But what really seals the deal is everything else around the steaks. Chips are crisp and a real size without slipping into chunkiness. (You know how much I abhor chunky chips.) The salad has a good pokey vinaigrette and lots of fresh green herbs in among the more common leaves.
There's a tray with a great variety of different mustards, plus Bearnaise and horseradish sauces. And the selection of cheeses to finish were perfectly kept, especially the squidgy brie, which was making a small bid for freedom. Apple crumble tasted pleasantly of clove, and there was a good contrast between the sweetness of the topping and the sharpness of the apple. The best I can do by way of criticism is to wonder whether my sticky toffee pudding was on the dry side. But I can't really summon the will to wonder about it in any great detail.
Not least because of the wine list, which is an encouraging collection of big reds, including a lot of chunky Bordeaux and Burgundies, at hugely encouraging prices. (To refer back to my price test of a few weeks ago, the '97 Musar is here on offer at £27. At the Vineyard at Stockcross it was being sold for £115.) And then there was the service, which is to say, one nice lady who took our order and brought us stuff when it was ready. Popeseye is simple. It's uncomplicated. It's a real steakhouse and I can't say better than that.
