Meaty matters - Hawksmoor Guildhall

However hard you try to buy fresh, buy local and buy interesting food, the dire economic climate lays its cold hand on your shopping list. You find yourself looking for Jacob’s ladder to stew slowly in a casserole; you experiment with beans and lentils; you opt for boring, wintertime vegetables rather than fancy stuff. And you don’t have to be Chancellor of the Exchequer to pinpoint the reason for this kind of shopping – times are tough so let’s save money. It all sounds perfectly logical, but then you look at the London restaurant scene and there is little evidence of belt tightening. Sure, London lives in a bubble and is insulated fom real life, but it looks like the fiddlers may be playing while the city starts to smoulder.

If austerity is the watchword, and chefs should be finding inventive ways to make cheap ingredients go a lot further, why is there a manic craze for large and ever-more expensive steaks? Russian steakist Goodman now has a City branch; 34 a “meat, steak and game restaurant” has opened just off Grosvenor Square; Wolfgang Puck has opened Cut on Park Lane (a 6oz filet mignon for £85).

There is a “safety first” logic that might suggest good business for steak houses in a recession, after all a decent steak is very nearly comfort food, but so many new meat eateries play the  gross over-indulgence card. That’s the one where you have frighteningly large lumps of meat and an equally enormous bill.

Hawksmoor (the third restaurant in this mini chain recently opened behind the Guildhall) treads a careful line between a damned good steak and large pieces of show-off meat. The starters are excellent. We are so used to Fergus Henderson’s marrow bone and parsley salad that the Hawksmoor “Bone marrow and slow cooked onions” (£6) makes a delightful and richly gooey change.  “6 Dorset rock oysters with little sausages” (£16.50) hits the spot. “Plum pudding belly ribs” (£10) are admirably sticky. The steaks are carefully cooked – the right balance between crisp outside and well rested pink middle.  A 600g “bone-in sirloin” costs £30. And 350g of 55 day aged D-rump will set you back an entirely reasonable £20. The supporting cast doesn’t disappoint – chicken; bacon chops; lobster; beef dripping chips;  triple cooked chips; mash with gravy. The long dining room is all hurly burly and you get the feeling that from the first drinks at the bar to the final grace note portion of sticky toffee pudding you are in for a jolly and boisterous time.

Steak is certainly safe, and in these straightened times safe can be very attractive… up until the moment when it costs a king’s ransom.

Goodman City Restaurant. 11 Old Jewry, Bank, London, EC2R 8DU (020 7600 8220 www.goodmanrestaurants.com)

34, 34 Grosvenor Square, London W1K 2HD (020 3350 3434 www.34-restaurant.co.uk)

Cut - 45 Park Lane, London W1K 1PN (020 7629 4848 www.45parklane.com)

Hawksmoor Guildhall, 10-12 Basinghall Street, City, London EC2V 5BQ. (020 7397 8120  www.thehawksmoor.co.uk)