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 to Cut might necessitate a small loan/bank robbery/surprise inheritance from a long-lost great aunt.
Though it 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. Grover 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.
Starters are fittingly immense; 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. This is big, blow-out dining that makes no apologies for the gargantuan size of its flavours.
We order an array of steaks, but the star 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? The ‘Taste of Cut’ platter made up of UK sirloin, then Japanese and Australian Wagyu is decent, 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.
The vibe Sleek, US-styled steakhouse in a posh Mayfair hotel.
The food Meat! And lots of it.
The drink Red wine is the move, but there are plenty of cocktails on offer too.
Time Out tip There are aeals to be had. Cut’s ‘Steak & Salad’ set lunch offers a more affordable option, at £45 for a 10oz ribeye and signature salad.