Maze Grill - André's review

I now know how Gary feels arriving early at the pre-drinks venue. But then being unemployed (a theme I’ll return to) means I had to make sure that I was there first to prevent any kind of valid ridicule that would have followed if I hadn’t been first.

We ended up at the Golden Eagle pub in a rather posh Marylebone-ish area. Fortunately the tiny pub emptied a little before everyone else arrived and we managed to find some space and eventually a table to cluster around. I’ve been advised many times by my shoulder doctor and physio not to drink while recovering from my shoulder op and to date have been very good about this. On steak night I couldn’t not drink the red wine but did manage to avoid other drinks on the evening. Obviously this comes with the usual banter and looks. Part and parcel.

Despite my earlier pleas in the day to go to an unemployed budget matching restaurant like the Cattlegrid a not so short cab ride later Gary had us dropped off outside the Maze Grill! Nice one Gazza. Time to start calling in those lines of credit until my first pay day in January sometime. It’s going to be a lean Christmas.


Venue – 8
The venue is really good. Even if three people to take your coat and confirm your booking at the reception is a bit of overkill. Would have scored higher if we’d had the chefs table, even though the main man himself was away at his central kitchen somewhere. Good presentation of steaks on boards with good knives (despite being serrated).

Menu – 7
Very good cross selection of meat sources and feed (i.e. grass or corn fed beef) but a little lacking in the size selection

Waitress – 6
We were served by a French waitress from St Tropez for the greater part of the evening with the exception of the sommelier and his Forrest Whitaker in his younger days look-alike assistant. She did well enough and did bring out a meat board before we ordered but we didn’t exactly ask too many testing questions so her extent of steak knowledge remains untested.

Steak – 6.5
With the exception of a tough market bought home cooked rump steak and an Alpaca steak somewhere in the south of Peru this was the only steak I’d had for the last 4 months. You’d expect me to then score any piece of roadkill put on my plate very highly given the law of diminishing marginal utility. But that wasn’t the case. We had spoken so much in the last year about who was finally going to take us to Maze Grill that our expectations by now were really high. This cancelled out any steak abstinence over the last few months. I ordered the bone in rib eye (medium). The non-fatty meat was very tasty with the correct texture but for a rib eye the amount of surrounding fat (not the usual marbling) was startling. Not something I’d expect at a restaurant of this reputation. Gary and Brad ordered the Creekstone rub eye and these were the steaks of the evening (even when cooked rare!). My rating would have been better if I’d ordered one of these.

Wine – 7.5
The first wine was a Bianchi Malbec and I thought was very good and not too heavy to start with. The second wine we had was an Izada el Regalo Rioja and not up to the same standard as the Malbec. In hindsight the order of these wines would have been changed.

Value – 6
A bill of £71.10 is not terrible but then this didn’t include any shooters, pre-drinks, starters etc. However, I did expect an evening at the Maze Grill to burn more of a hole in the pocket than that.

Other:
• My memory of the evening will be of Wassie staring at his ‘clean’ steak knife that had just come out of a cardboard sheath on his steak board only to find that it had grease on both sides of the knife already. Unknown to Wassie, when the steak arrived while he was away from the table we (well Gary at my insistence) had rubbed the knife on the steak and returned to the cardboard sheath. Wassie’s face was hilarious and looked at his knife then looked at Brad’s to see if this was normal for them to ‘oil the knife’ – Wassie’s own words. We did have to stop him when he asked the waiter why he had been given a dirty knife.
• Shooters and celebratory drinks postponed to another evening…
• The spinach and feta side order was good but the chips were a little on the stingy side


Would I go again? Yes, to try another steak this time
Would I recommend it to a friend? Yes
Would I take the Steak Club there knowing what I know now? Hmm, not so sure

Steak – 6.5 * 5 = 32.5
Venue – 8
Menu – 7
Waitress – 6
Wine – 7.5
Value – 6

Total – 67