I went to ‘London’s best steak restaurant’ - here’s what Mayfair meat palace Cut at 45 Park Lane is really like

Are you utterly silly for steak? Well, London is a wonderful place to make a vow of everlasting commitment to the meat sweats. In a recent ranking of the world’s best steak restaurants, eight homegrown spots made the grade, including Notting Hill’s Dorian, Aragawa and Goodman in Mayfair, Beast in Marylebone, and Lutyens Grill in the City.

The highest-ranked London restaurant though was Cut at 45 Park Lane, a big budget, and unabashedly full-throttle joint which came in at Number 10. But is it worth the praise? We went to find out. 

Cut is on the ground floor of the highly fancy 45 Park Lane. The Dorchester’s sister hotel, it also happens to be home to London’s most expensive sushi restaurant, Sushi Kanesaka, where the set menu is £420 a head. If the address didn’t already give the game away, this is another clue that a visit here might necessitate a small loan/bank robbery/surprise inheritance from a long-lost great aunt. 

Cut was opened in 2011 (the same year as the hotel) by Wolfgang Puck, the Austrian superchef and man behind Beverly Hill’s legendary fine-dining location, Spago. Since 2022, Cut’s exec chef has been congenial Cornishman Elliott Grover, who started his career at Le Caprice, before going on to work at Scott’s and then Duck and Waffle. In other words, this is a man who knows his meat. 

Stylistically, this is the kind of place where an intense, slightly shouty scene from Succession would take place. It’s essentially a Manhattan gentleman’s club from the 1980s, with red leather banquettes and tweed bolster cushions, lots of dark wood, the biggest blinds you’ve ever seen, moody lighting and huge floor-to-ceiling windows facing Park Lane. If feeling fancy is your favourite kind of feeling, then a booth here will let you live out your dream as an accidental aristo. 

We take a sneaky visit downstairs to the kitchen, where Grover and his team show us the majestically marbled meat before it’s cooked over the flames of a special Konro grill from Japan. This is serious stuff – huge hunks of raw flesh from all over the world, with USDA-grade prime beef from Cedar Farms that’s been dry aged for 35 days, Wagyu from Queensland in Australia, and A5 Wagyu (the king of beefs) from Kagoshima in Japan, as well as British beef. The cheapest? 6oz of American filet mignon for £84. The most pricey? 35oz of bone-in tomahawk steak of Australian Wagyu for £340.

Back in the dining room, our starters arrive. Fittingly immense, there are spicy tuna tartare cones in a crispy, sesame miso tuile (a direct lift from the menu at Spago), as well as chunky prawn spring rolls with a spiced honey dip, and steak tartare bites with whopping great big black truffle shavings. Oh and caviar. This is big, blow-out dining that makes no apologies for the gargantuan size of its flavours. 

We order an array of different steaks, but the star of the night is our slab of A5 Wagyu from Kagoshima. It’s all the things people say great steak should be; buttery, creamy, and so easy to run a knife through it might as well be whipped air. A side of lurid green chimichurri sauce seems almost redundant – when the steak is this good, why would we want it to taste of anything apart from steak?

Our ‘Taste of Cut’ is a kind of one-plate tasting platter made up of UK sirloin, then Japanese and Australian Wagyu, at £160. It’s nice, but we can't stop thinking about the A5. 

Woman cannot exist on steak alone. Our arteries would surely crumble. So, for health, we have a perky Caesar salad with superb anchovy and parmesan distribution, as well as chunky broccoli rabe enlivened with tomato and garlic. And, of course, steak’s best food friend; fries. These ones come dotted with herbs, and considering the amount of meat we’ve ingested, we’ll take all the greenery we can. 

Is Cut the best steakhouse in London? It definitely feels that way, but the cost might make it an impossible option for many. There are, however, deals to be had. Cut’s ‘Steak & Salad’ set lunch offers a more affordable option, at £45 for a 10oz ribeye and signature salad.

The best steak restaurants in London, according to Time Out.

The 7 best new London restaurants opening in February 2025.

The hottest new openings, the tastiest tips, the spiciest reviews: we’re serving it all on our London restaurants WhatsApp channel. Follow us now to tuck in.

Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out London newsletter for the best of the city, straight to your inbox.