Brad’s Review – The Door

Let me start again by saying, ‘This is not a drinking club!’. We all seem to say this out load a lot, but after this event and the hang-overs across the board, we may start to wonder whether to rename this at The Steak and Drinking Club. I can however say this has been the worst drinking event so far and hopefully won’t repeat this mistake again. We were however catching up on quite a few Strafdop’s from previous events, a new invited guest (Roger – AKA: Frank the Tank, who was also celebrating a birthday) and some very very late reviews. Let’s hope the next event is only a few social penalty Strafdops. As I am writing this, I am starting to wonder whether we have however learned our lessons, as it is a few hours before the cut-off of the 2nd week for late reviews and nobody has posted a review yet...

As Andre is on long term travels, we decide in his absence, the host could choose to invite an eager honouree guest to our steak club evening. I invited Roger (AKA: Frank the Tank).

Pre-drinks started at the Brew Wharf Yard, Stoney Street. It is a nice after work type of Bar in a trendy area near Borough Market and just opposite a potential steak club venue – which I must admit had the guys guessing. The classic moment of the pre-drinks was Roger asking us, before everyone had even arrived and we had not even had a taste of a steak, whether this meant that he could now be a full time member of the steak club. If I remember correctly, he got a bit of a chorus answer with the 3 members saying together, No..... He looked quite shocked, not realising the difficulty and the desire to become a member. I think Stacey felt sorry for him and said that he could also attend the next event as he is the host and therefore he chooses the guest. Roger’s face changed from very disappointed to a large gleaming smile.

It was then time to head over to the restaurant of choice, The Door. It is part of the Door Group, which also owns The Green Door Restaurant. It has a rather posh French Style Restaurant/Trendy Bar feel to it. All in all, it is a very nice venue, well decorated and very professionally managed. My rating for the venue, based on all of these factors and the general good service is therefore a 7.5.

As the host I ordered all the drinks and the sides. We started with a round of nice cold bottled beer’s to wet our pallets before we got stuck into some wine with our steaks. I then ordered a bottle of Malbec, Altos Las Hormigas, Mendoza 2010, which I was pleasantly surprised at how nice it was. We also got a second bottle on the house, due to Warren’s steak order being messed up (a nice bit of good service without us even asking), which went down as well as the first. My rating for the wine is 7.

As a starter for us to all share, we tried the house speciality, Australian / Chilian Waygu beef. I have never tried Waygu Beef before so was very keen to see whether it was exceptional, especially at £42 for about a 10 Oz cut. It had a subtle favour and was very tender, but in my opinion, not as good as some of the best standard steaks we have had elsewhere. I am however glad I have now tried Waygu Beef. As sides, I ordered some mixed vegetables, cream spinach and sweat potato wedges (this was outstanding). The guys chose their steaks and I ordered a 16 Oz rib-eye on the bone which cost £38. Probably a bit on the pricier side, however it was very good. The choice was reasonable, but they did not really have many options of big cuts or wide choice different steaks and cuts some of the other restaurants we have been to. The other guys however did claim that mine seemed to be the steak of the night. My rating for steak is 6.5 and menu is 6.

Leading onto the value category, it not cost us as much as other places, however that is probably due to us only paying for one bottle of wine (not two) and the free round of Limonchelo that was included. The service was good throughout, maybe a little pushy to order more sides that we were asking for, but they were very quick to give complementary compensation through a few freebies. My rating for value is therefore 6 and waitress is 6.

Venue = 7.5.
Wine – 7.
Steak = 6.5 x 5 = 32.5
Menu = 6.
Value = 6.
Waitress = 6.
Total = 65.

It is at this point we should have settled for one nightcap pint at the Pitcher and Piano and then headed home. I however had a ‘bee in my bonnet’ - that we had to sort out the Strafdop tally with a tray of ‘White Spirits’ (a Russian roulette of vodka, tequila, gin or water). Each person had to choose tot glasses of the tray to drink and hoped they got some waters. It turned out that Gary, Warren and I got the waters which meant Roger and Stacey probably felt worse than I did the next day. Roger was also celebrating a ‘Birthday’...