Here’s everything you need to know about Bar + Block: it’s a Beefeater in disguise. The meat merchant has decided to rebrand itself as a trendy steak joint with funky wood-clad walls, orangey mood lighting and menus full of cow diagrams that go into serial killer-esque detail on various cuts of meat. From just the decor, you could almost be fooled into thinking that you’re in a Flatiron.
Until you eat the food – which feels like the result of a production line rather than careful cooking. Their chimichurri sauce was an oily gloop that looked like it had been scooped from a plastic vat. What should’ve been a lovely melty crust of fat on a sirloin steak was served as bullet-hard gristle. The crab mac ’n’ cheese’ was a normal mac ’n’ cheese with the crab content dolloped on top afterwards, cold as the morgue.
But when the cost of a dinner for two is approaching £100, you expect better. A funky steak restaurant isn’t just made by walls that look a bit like they’ve been salvaged from a shed. The food needs to be good too: something that Bar + Block would do well to realise.