November 2012
It’s barely three weeks old and Steak Frites at 23 LoveLane is already walking briskly. Adamant to be the steak place in George Town everyone will go to, it offers choice steak and well prepared fries after breakfast time. Housed in a building that is over a hundred years old and exuding a relaxed and dignified ambience, you’d never guess the restaurant sits on a street with a juicy, salacious history. Let’s just say the street wasn’t called Love Lane without a good reason! Although, it’s now a rather neat area peppered with quaint eateries and small businesses.
Its lunch/dinner menu was deliberately kept simple, to concentrate on keeping the standard high. Here, you can either order the 150gm or 200gm of Australian grass-fed tenderloin steak. And that’s it. The steak is then cooked to your liking, and as with good steaks, keeping it at medium or medium rare is very much advised. At medium rare, there is still texture in every bite of the very tender beef. Served warm with a generous dollop of Chef Chin’s special butter, the steak accompanies fries, and nothing else. There are no complex flavours to confuse your palate here, no complicated configuration of textures. There’s just you and the heavenly meat fragrant with secret ingredients from the butter.
Australian grass-fed tenderloin steak
The steaks are reasonably priced at RM49 for the 150gm piece and RM60 for the 200gm. It is inclusive of a simple salad that is served before the main course and is lightly drizzled with a delicate French dressing. For those who can, it might be an idea to complement the main course with a glass of their Argentinian Cabernet/Malbec house wine at RM12.
Steak Frites is open daily and as early as 7am, not only to serve breakfast to its lovely ten-room hotel guests next door but also to those who walk in off the street looking for Continental or American breakfast sets at RM16 or RM30 respectively. Its steak menu is served from 5pm on weekdays and from 12pm on weekends. Su Aziz