I was going to review this place next year when I could have titled the post, 4030 2010. But on the 40th floor bar of 30 St Mary’s Axe the view could not wait and, verily, it must be one of the most stunning in the whole of London.
Hotel restaurants always give me a slight sinking feeling. Reminders of 1980s boil in the bag meals; they always smell of stale cooking, probably because breakfast buffets are when they get 90% of their traffic.
The Hotel Russell probably counts early risers 99% of its clientele. It’s easier to get a table at The Ivy than a breakfast table here. Dinner, however, was predictably quiet. A few lonely foreign travellers and one table of two couples from Yorkshire who were asking for more gravy – gravy shortages are punishable by death north of Watford Gap.
Marketing null points! The sign makes it look like a Hungry Hippo All-U-Can-Eat Sunday lunch with foam balls and cheap beer. But step inside and nothing could be further from the truth. Fine seafood, fine wine list, fine (but relaxed) service and with just enough quirkiness and kitsch to make you smile.
La Réserve de Quasimodo is self subtitled: Le plus vieux bistrot en l’ile de la cité. Seven centuries of history. Did Asterix the Gaul possibly eat here?
Tonight I am drinking Terrazas de los Andes Reserva Malbec 2006. A very nice wine and worth every penny of the £8.50 I paid Costco for it.
This is one of the staples of the Gaucho Grill wine list, but when average wine markups in the UK are between 100 and 200% (i.e. double to three times the wholesale price) how come Gaucho thinks it can charge £37.50, a 341% uplift, and that is against the RETAIL price. Is this a new British and Commonwealth record?
As taste sensations go, there is little to beat a hunk of well seasoned Argentinian beef, chargrilled and accompanied by a glass of decent Malbec. Chewing on the salty, aged and bloody meat causes a tingling in your gums as if a bovine mouthwash. This then undergoes some kind of chemical reaction with the deep, moody, spicy wine that leaves you digesting the meal for a whole week. Sharp pangs – taste reminders – keep haunting you like salivating ghosts of taste past that make you press your teeth together in muscle memory.
As Argentinian steakhouses go, The Gaucho Grill takes the biscuit. Not only for great steaks with superb ghost potential, but also for awesome (by which I mean sky high) wine prices. Markups of over 300% are commonplace. That is four times the retail price and presumably they pay the importer much less! Is there a venue which matches the steak quality and authenticity, but where the only fleecing is associated with an occasional lamb chop?
In Leeds, a place I dine all too rarely these days, River Plate has appeared on the site once known as the Calls Grill. The menu looked pretty similar to Gaucho but, to be frank, the wine list looked cheap!
Have you ever been haunted? The name Teyssier has been my stalker recently. It has bought out the best of Virgin Wines and contemporaneously the reason why they often ever so slightly under-achieve. Well, nobody can please everybody every day!
When I wrote up my notes from the Leeds Restaurant Awards I was noodling why I didn’t spend more time in Leeds’ eateries. Vowing to put that right, I looked up the programme from the event for some inspiration. The Olive Tree was well represented and is a somewhat legendary Greek offering with three establishments in the Leeds area. Not exactly ubiquity, but I generally avoid chains unless they are focussed, and this one is the Leica lens of Greek dining.
I’ve written before about the rip-off wine mark-ups at the Gaucho Grill (branches in London and Manchester).
Although the wine is outrageously priced, I do pop in occasionally for a top class steak. And so last week saw me in the Manchester restaurant. I thought it would be interesting to revisit the wine prices.
In my post of March 2007, I benchmarked a bottle of Susana Balbo Malbec (excellent stuff) at an eye watering mark-up of 250%. The bottle, available at the time from the Wine Society at £11.95, was marked up to £42.
Time to check out the latest prices. I checked the Wine Society website and, fair play, it is in stock and still £11.95. Inflation rate = 0%.
When I checked out the Gaucho Grill wine list, the price has inflated by a Graf Zeppelinistic 22.6% to £51.50. This now makes the mark-up (against retail price, and one assumes that Gaucho can buy much cheaper) a groin kicking 331%. By far the highest I have ever seen in any restaurant.
The matured meat may be superb, but I would rather cut my pupils out with a serrated steak knife, than pay these prices.
By all means eat at the Gaucho, but when it comes to wine, just say “NO”.
Raymond Blanc, founder of high profile restaurant with rooms, Le Manoir aux quat’saisons, and currently starring in the latest culinary reality TV show from the BBC, The Restaurant, has another business interest, a chain of eateries.
I showed up at Brasserie Blanc in Manchester only to discover that Monsieur Blanc has not visited the place in two years. The brasserie looked unloved and was almost completely empty. Would this be a culinary delight, or should Raymond come and close his own restaurant?
Stumble It!
