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1 Fine dining in Mayfair with an African twist
The name leaves little to the imagination, or does it? Yes, The Meat & Wine Co serves a fine range of quality meat and fish, but the rather pleasant surprise is that this restaurant features and embraces African cuisine, adding a different twist to the menu.
We are here to sample the lunch menu, which for £28 for two courses or £35 for three courses, provides excellent value when you consider that you are in the centre of Mayfair, a short walk from Berkeley Square and Shepherd Market. I am a huge advocate of fixed-priced lunch menus. They enable you to savour the food and fine dining restaurant experience at a bargain price.
We promote the best fixed-price offers in our newsletter; apologies for the not-so-subtle plug for my newsletter.
Joining me for our lunch feast is my brother Neil, who unsurprisingly follows the family tradition of foodies.
The weather did its best to dampen our excitement, and the short walk from Green Park station was made more difficult as we navigated the crowded pavements, avoiding the rather large puddles due to heavy rain. It was so heavy we had to seek refuge in The Chesterfield Arms for a quick refreshment (well, we had to dry off😀).
Twenty minutes later and slightly dryer and less dishevelled, we enter The Meat & Wine Co for lunch.
2 Restaurant
The restaurant is on Curzon Street and is The Meat & Wine Co’s first UK restaurant, with four sister restaurants in Australia.
The interior space is well-designed, with subtle touches highlighting the African heritage. The dining room is large, but the space is cleverly designed so that whatever table you sit at feels smaller.
The house’s speciality is a range of steaks and the A La Carte menu offering grain and grass-fed steaks from Europe, the US and Australia—with a selection of their own dry-aged steaks.
3 Lunch Menu
We are here to experience the lunch menu. As previously mentioned, the menu offers a two & three-course menu. There are three entrees, at least five mains, and three desserts, which is an impressive choice for a lunch menu.
Starters
In true review style, we decided to share our starters and mains, which worked well.
We ordered Lightly fried calamari, cucumber, onion, lemon and nam jim sauce (nam Jim is a Thai dipping sauce) and the short rib croquette containing Slow cooked beef, Parmesan, jus, gremolata and black garlic aioli.
First off, from experience, I know it is difficult to cook calamari perfectly; it only takes a minute or two, but overcook it, and you are left with an inedible rubbery piece that vague resembles calamari, so much to our relief the chef had timed cooking to perfection, I always feel anything battered needs a sauce, and this dipping sauce worked a treat.
The short rib croquettes were excellent, and we both agreed that we would happily munch our way through a big bowl of these on their own, and be very full but incredibly happy. As we were sharing, I have to confess to being envious of my brother eating the third croquette, but he was my guest it was only the right thing to do. I did finish the last calamari, so there was an upside.
Mains
As I mentioned before, there were five choices for the mains, and we decided on Rump Heart (I’m not sure why it was called a heart) and to give it’s full menu description, Angus x Hereford, Grass Fed from Argentina. Grilled with a signature basting and served with gem salad. And after much deliberation, we sided with the chicken skewer with Mozambique peri-peri & lemon basting. Served with crunchy chips.
On the menu was another steak dish, steak tagliata, a burger (which looked lovely), and mushroom risotto.
The steak was cooked medium rare and, as mentioned in the menu notes, “cooked to perfection”. The gem salad worked well alongside; in case you’re wondering why we did not order chips with the steak, the chicken skewer came with chips. The chicken skewer was served hanging from a stand. They did provide tongs to remove the chicken from the skewer, but we both seemed to make a mess of removing the chicken; anyhow, once removed, the chicken was so moist and so worth the effort.
There is a range of sauces to go with the steak and we plumped for the Chimichurri.
Confession time, we did stray from the lunch menu, our waitress dropped in on the conversation about the Truffle Mac & cheese, it contained Parmesan, Gruyère, Cheddar & mozzarella, and truffle with chive. It was a clever move as we were sold and added it to our mains. It was so worth it and I can see why it is a big favourite at the restaurant.
At this point I should mention the drinks menu, on the list they offerred a wide selection of wines by the glass, also no alcohol beer and cocktails which is ideal if you are on a working lunch. We plumped for a couple of glasses of Pinot Noir with our meal.
Desserts
With only two desserts on the menu we ordered both, Neil went for the Creme Brulee served with Ginger snap biscuit, whipped mascarpone and lemon balm. And for me I went for the Mava Pudding which originates from South Africa, Apricot coulis, vanilla ice-cream and freeze-dried raspberries. Which was lovely but very filling. The brulee passed the snap test with flying colours.
So thats our lunch at The Meat & Wine Co, first thing to mention is if you are thinking of going and wondering if you can fit lunch in within an hour, then the answer is yes, the service is very much on point, and the staff were excellent. We were not in a hurry and requested a slower-paced service. I would also mention that after taking on three courses we were full and although this is a lunch menu the portion size was more than sufficient.
Would I return? The answer is yes and might be tempted to dive into the A La Carte menu, however, the lunch menu is great value and makes a small dent in your bank account.
Hopefully having read the above, you are tempted to book, I would sum up and say The Meat & Wine Co is the full fine-dining experience set in the perfect location, I might be a little biased when it comes to the location😀.
The Meat & Wine Co
17 Curzon Street
Mayfair,London
W1J 5HU
The Meat & Wine co menu
