336-337 Strand, London WC2 (020 7395 3450). Meal for two, including wine and service: £150
Vowels are useful little blighters. With them the word Steak becomes a serviceable, if blunt name for a restaurant. Without them it becomes STK, and that just sounds like a nasty sexually transmitted disease. In the sense that the minimal amount of pleasure gained from the experience is not worth the risks and general unpleasantness, that's spot on. STK, part of an American chain, describes itself as a "female-friendly" joint, or as the slogan puts it: this is "Not your daddy's steakhouse". I'm sure this is so, because if your father was in the market for a steakhouse he'd doubtless go to a good one, which this is not. The food here grasps for adequacy and mostly misses.
As it is meant to be a female-friendly steakhouse I went with two females. We agreed that the only obviously female thing in the room was the flanged and labial chicken-wire sculpture hanging from the ceiling, the sweet spot represented by some dangling light bulbs. Gals, if a representation of a giant fanny makes you feel at ease and welcomed, then this is the place for you. Otherwise it's all black-leather banquettes, downlighters and thumping music. It looks like you imagine a chronic cocaine habit feels, all tiresome dash and bellow.
Prices are very high, as is the ambition. It's just all too frenetic, overworked and underthought. A "brioche" loaf, for example, must remain inside those quotation marks for having the texture of cheap white bread. It was not improved by being smeared with blue-cheese oil. I can't quite imagine anything would be. A dish of "Prawns Rice Krispies" brings a bowl with three well-cooked prawns on a bed of multicoloured puffed rice. Over this is poured a powerful shellfish bisque. You hear the Krispies snap and crackle – and that is the moment of their death. And so, farewell. It ends up looking like something produced by a toddler when the weaning got a little ambitious. The deflated Krispies bob like so much undigested roughage. An aromatic duck salad is wet and not especially aromatic.
Lil' BRGS irritate for having mislaid most of its vowels (apart from the "i", which probably has a better agent than the other letters). It brings two wagyu sliders at £10.50 the pair. Add £6 for slices of truffle because they tell us it would make things so much better, and we hanker after that. Wagyu is prized for its texture. So why the hell put it through the mincer? They are small dense pucks of mildly flavourful beef. It is one of those items that achieves that adequacy it craved.
Waiting for the mains recalls the moment before the puff of air and insertion of my last colonoscopy. You just know it's going to be something that must be endured. I order the New York strip – the equivalent of a sirloin in the UK – at £24 for 250g. I ask for it medium rare; it arrives medium, and cut tragically thin, so that it's far too much char and not enough blood. A good steak needs depth, which this does not have. Their béarnaise is a catering student's admirable first attempt. Coconut-fried halibut is a fine tranche of overcooked fish on an underdressed noodle salad. A "head to hoof" veal mixed grill is odd for having an honour guard of stodgy, lacklustre black pudding which had nothing to do with baby cow and everything to do with pig. Bits of overcooked veal kidney squeak their way across the teeth. A piece of loin is tough. By some terrible oversight the small slab of veal liver is cooked perfectly. There will probably have to be an inquest over this, to see what went wrong.While the flavour isn't bad, the sauce in a mac 'n' cheese has split so it's all sandy graininess. We prefer the dish of sweet roasted baby onions.
We finish with the "fairground attraction", a shiny Ferris wheel hung with sweet things. The tiny ice cream cones are pleasant; the sticky popcorn, toffee apples, marshmallows and candyfloss all distinctly average for £14. Wines are punishingly expensive, staff omnipresent and not always vastly intelligible, and the toilets smell of melon. Yes, really. Then again it is a female-friendly steakhouse. I went for a wee and felt my oestrogen levels leap. It was the high point of the evening.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
