Hawksmoor

Mr_Orange

Mr_Orange

Mr_Orange

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Just booked a table for a few weeks time at Hawksmoor Spitalfields.

I'll have to watch what I order so my wallet doesn't hate me!

Anyone got any recommendations on what to order?
 
lookitsjonno said:
trying this place for the first time on a sunday lunchtime next month... do you recommend the sunday roast or a steak?
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The steak from there is extremely good but the Sunday roast is possibly the nicest Sunday roast I have ever had and it is exceptional value for money. As you are there on a Sunday, I'd say go for the roast!
 
DRZ said:
The steak from there is extremely good but the Sunday roast is possibly the nicest Sunday roast I have ever had and it is exceptional value for money. As you are there on a Sunday, I'd say go for the roast!
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i'll take your word for it :cool:

might just try a steak the next day :p
 
Hawkmsoor. What can I say about it? I have lost count of the number of times I have been there, yet every time I still look forward to it immensely and have to hold back the tears of joy as I bite in to the first juicy morsel of chateaubriand. I have a table there this Sunday just in case I can go.

My personal favourite order is:

500g of chateaubriand to myself
Half a lobster
Macaroni cheese
Baked sweet potato
Mustard and/or horseradish
A bottle of Lamborghini Campoleone

My eyes are watering just typing this and I hope to go there and order that on Sunday! Bear in mind my favourite is definitely not good for your wallet as, including service, it's £167.06 for one!
 
I'm going to the one on Commercial Road again tonight! :D

After having picked up their cook book, I'm quite tempted to try something non-steaky, as I'm off to Goodman next week and want to eat my own body weight in fillet whilst there!

For Hawksmoor, I'd recommend their Chateaubriand personally. And order yourself one of their Ginger Brews!
 
I went for the second time a couple of weeks ago whilst in London on work. Between 5 of us we had 1.9kg bone in prime, triple cooked chips, beef dripping chips, the mushrooms, creamed spinach, bone marrow and bone marrow grave, mac and cheese. It was absolutely immense. Make sure you leave enough time to have a couple fo cocktails at the bar before or after, in particular i recommend the Manhattan, comes de constructed and you make it up yourself.

The waiter was also telling me the hotdogs and burgers are amazing. We actually got some free starters, spicy pork chops and a Waldorf salad. Brilliant.
 
Never managed to reply to the other thread, but thought I'd put my thoughts across in this one instead.

I went to the Hawksmoor (the one in Spitalfields) a few weeks back, so here's my write up.
There were 6 of us for the meal, no-one had starters, we all had steak for mains and there were four puddings.
All in it came to £450 with sides, a few bottles of wine.

I have to say that, while the steak was good, I'm not quite sure it was worth the price. For £75 per head I actually thought it was actually quite average.

Between the six of us, three shared a 1kg Chateaubriand, one person and I shared a 900g bone-in prime rib and the last guy had the 400g rib-eye.
We ordered the prime rib medium-rare and I would say it was more on the medium side. The Chateaubriand was actually ordered medium and it was more rare than the rib.
I got a bearnaise sauce with mine and it had clearly been made in advance and simply spooned into the dish as the butter wasn't at all warm.
The chips were good, and certainly very crispy - although some of them were a little overdone with little in the way of potato in the middle.

As of yet, I haven't really mentioned the actual steaks, so I'll rectify that now.
They were good, but nothing too special.
I actually work not too far from the Ginger Pig butchers main shop where the Hawksmoor get their steaks from and am a reasonably regular customer there. I know how to cook a good steak myself, so perhaps this skewed my perceptions but I reckon the steaks that I have cooked myself from there could give anything in the Hawksmoor a decent run for its money.

If the food had been combined with an amazing atmosphere then I could perhaps have been swayed to see the awesomeness, but to me it was a pretty average restaurant serving better than average steaks for much more than average prices and I probably wouldn't go back there in a hurry.
 
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I had the same problem. Great, but just not good enough for the (considerable) price involved. Truth being told, I'd rather go to Dinner or any of a whole host of other places in London for the same money and just order my own meat from the Ginger Pig, cook it myself and pocket the (considerable) change.

I did enjoy my visit, I'm not saying it wasn't good, just that it was stupid money for what was delivered.
 
Interesting thoughts - myself and some friends did a steak night the other week and sourced all our meat from Jack O'Shea. I'll be doing a writeup about it soon when my mate uploads the pictures, but I think we managed to actually produce as good an end product as you could possibly hope for, for a fraction of the price.

Of course the problem is you don't get the service and the rest of the experience, but when I look at how much a meal at hawksmoor costs, I do now have second thoughts. On the other hand, if I were to go to the Ledbury, Roganic or one of the other top London restaurants, I know i'd end up with a load of dishes that would take me days to prepare at home, that's without even thinking about the ingredients!
 
Yeah, that's the thing for me. It's not that it's bad, because it clearly isn't, but it's the fact that I could produce something not too far off at home for a fraction of the price.

One of the best dining experiences I've had in London is at Pearl. It cost a reasonable amount more than the Hawksmoor (though a lot of that was alcohol!), but the whole experience was on a different level. The service, the food and the attention to detail were all amazing and I would consider that to be better value for money.
 
I do agree to an extent. I get all my meat from the butchers, and a very good one, and cook them well, so steak night chez moi is damn good. Properly 3x fried chips, fresh onion rings, all the sides. I love it. So for the actual money you pay compared to other restaurants, I would say it's not worth that price. BUT it's the whole thing, as you say. Their roasts are supposed to be excellent (I'm due one!) and burgers and bar snacks look fantastic. Just depends what your expectations are I would say.

Oh, did I mention I'm doing Roganic and the Ledbury soon? :D I did? Oh, OK. I'm going to do a write up on those and have been talking to Ben Spalding at Roganic so hopefully get to meet him while I'm there.
 
I think the Hawksmoor in Spitalfields has lost its edge a little bit now. I almost exclusively go to Seven Dials. I've yet to try Guildhall!

Pearl looks quite cool so I'll be sure to give it a go.
 
QuickLink said:
I do agree to an extent. I get all my meat from the butchers, and a very good one, and cook them well, so steak night chez moi is damn good. Properly 3x fried chips, fresh onion rings, all the sides. I love it. So for the actual money you pay compared to other restaurants, I would say it's not worth that price. BUT it's the whole thing, as you say. Their roasts are supposed to be excellent (I'm due one!) and burgers and bar snacks look fantastic. Just depends what your expectations are I would say.

Oh, did I mention I'm doing Roganic and the Ledbury soon? :D I did? Oh, OK. I'm going to do a write up on those and have been talking to Ben Spalding at Roganic so hopefully get to meet him while I'm there.
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Excellent work, my 2 fav london restaurants :D

One thing I guess to remember is that as they say Steak is about keeping it simple - good sourcing, good cooking. You can't go wrong really - but the ingredients aren't cheap so I suppose it's not surprising how much the bill comes to!
 
I ate at the Seven Dials one on Thursday night with the missus. It was phenomenal.

To start I went for the bone marrow. Creamy, beefy yumminess!!!

The steak was easily the best I have ever had in this country (we had a 1.0 kg of bone in ribeye 'off the board' between us!) and the sides of beef dripping chips, triple cooked chips and creamed spinach were spot on.

As it was my birthday meal- despite my actual birthday being a month ago!- they brought us out a free dessert of sticky toffee pudding which was also faultless.

If you like steak and are in London, go here. Simple as that!
 
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