Nothing represents London’s newfound appreciation for prime meat more effectively than the dry-ageing glass cabinet at the Black Cow.
The restaurant will be the flagship of the new GBP750 million ($1.26 billion) development, the Stage in Shoreditch, when it opens in April, across the street from the forthcoming Museum of Shakespeare. Its most eye-catching feature is a 26-by-16-ft custom-built Italian cabinet with the capacity to hold 50 sides of beef that passers-by can ogle from the street.
A museum-worthy cabinet full of maturing beef joints — and the top-of-the-line Josper grill that owners Amir Batito and Shiri Kraus installed to ensure precise cooking — used to stand out in the UK capital. Now it is practically a staple, as London’s appetite for well-bred, well-aged beef continues to grow, even as overall consumption slowly declines in the UK.
Take Ibai, the ambitious City steakhouse that opened last May. Co-owner Nemanja Borjanovic runs Txuleta, a butcher importing prized Galician Blond beef from northern Spain for high-end steakhouses in town including his own Donostia and Lurra.
That luxury is not cheap: Ibai’s slabs of sirloin, T-bones and ribs start at GBP105/kg and are flying off the grill. The house specialty, Galician Blond sourced from Spain, goes for GBP130/kg, and it’s so popular the ribeyes sometimes sell out.
“Demand for niche beef like Galician Blond and rare breeds is certainly expanding,” observes Borjanovic, even as the price of beef goes up in the UK. In 2024, it was 50% higher than in 2020, he adds.
See also: Afternoon feasts
Even so, there is still a decent steak for all budgets, starting with Flat Iron’s eponymous GBP14 specialty — the chain recently opened its 14th location in Victoria — and running to GBP600/ kg for Japanese wagyu in Fitzrovia.
Carnivores looking to take a trip to London, rejoice at the six spots below.
Ibai
This new City venture, a stone’s throw from St Paul’s, has plenty of room in the handsome old factory, with well-spaced tables and an open kitchen with a fearsome grill, overseen by ex-Chiltern Firehouse head chef Richard Foster. The croque Ibai is a sublime, over-the-top bar snack, a crisp-grilled cheese sandwich harmoniously layered with both earthy black pudding and sweet carabinero shrimp.
But the must-order specialty is a bone-in cut of Galician Blond beef — T-bone, sirloin or rib — tipping the scales at well over a kilo each. The GBP130/kg cut is spectacularly good and richly flavoured, with rusty red, tender, marbled flesh.
Co-owner William Sheard’s excellent wine list rewards big spenders: Château Mouton-Rothschild 2008, for instance, is a relatively modest GBP700. For tighter budgets, there’s a full-throttled 2019 Miros Ribera del Duero Reserva 2019 for GBP69.
Kanpai Classic
Devotees of heavily marbled wagyu beef have a new destination dining room. The sleekly monochrome restaurant, which opened on Wardour Street in August, offers diners multiple cuts of wagyu from two varieties, top-grade A5 Japanese and the Australian Jack’s Creek, in almost every dish on the restaurant’s 14-course, GBP148 omakase menu.
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Raw, it is chopped into a tartare alongside caviar and celeriac puree; sliced into carpaccio with walnut vinaigrette and Parmesan; and used as a beefy layer in nigiri sushi, with yellowtail, lobster or eel.
Cooked — at the table, expertly seared over a glowing bucket of coals — you get more wagyu cuts than anywhere else in London. There’s prime rib, flank, short rib, knuckle, short plate and even tongue, thinly sliced from the tenderest center portion, flash-grilled and dressed with lemon and salt. The stellar sake list complements the meaty experience.
Bricco e Bacco
With its mustard-yellow walls, stone arches and dark-beamed ceilings, Bricco e Bacco looks like an archetypal Sicilian trattoria. The menu matches, starting with sfincione, the classic, pizza-like snack from Palermo, folded into a calzone. But, as the ageing cabinet makes clear, the restaurant’s specialty is steak.
Specifically, bone-in ribs and T-bones from Finland, Italy, Japan, Spain and the UK as well as specials from places like Poland, cooked rare over coals, sliced, then brought to the table on searingly hot pink salt slabs, for diners to finish cooking.
Most prices hover around GBP150/kg. (Spanish wagyu is GBP240; A5 Japanese wagyu can go for GBP600.) The wine list, unsurprisingly, leans heavily toward big reds from Sicily and Tuscany.
The Finnish grass-fed Sashi beef, strikingly marbled and generally found only in Europe, is especially impressive. And if it’s not cooked to your liking, you have only yourself to blame.
Goodman
The original clubby location in Mayfair still packs in contented hedge funders and affluent tourists, settled happily into dark leather banquettes, but there is now a pair of other Goodman locations.
Each venue ages its own beef in-house: on Maddox Street, that might mean a 550g USDA corn-fed, bone-in rib eye from Nebraska (GBP82), a 400g Scottish grass-fed fillet (GBP58), or a 300g Australian grain-fed wagyu fillet (GBP66). All are cooked on the flames of a Mibrasa charcoal oven, giving the beef a scorched crust and juicy flesh.
The lengthy wine list is fabulous, especially if you’re in the market for a classic Californian red.
Hawksmoor
The Hawksmoor empire now comprises 13 restaurants, including outposts in Chicago, Dublin and New York, but the modestly sized, low-lit mother ship in Spitalfields is still a favourite with hungry City denizens and loyal locals.
The specialty is British beef, either as individual steaks or in hulking great large cuts: chateaubriand, bone-in prime rib, porterhouse, T-bone, GBP120 to GBP155/kg. All come from traditionally reared, grass- and hay-fed cattle from small farms, the meat dry-aged for 35 days.
Go the whole hog (or ox) with triple-cooked beef-dripping fries and bone marrow gravy. And order one of their excellent cocktails such as the Fuller Fat old-fashioned, beefed up with salted brown butter.
Flat Iron
Flat Iron’s formula of nicely priced steaks (from GBP14), wine bottles (from GBP23) and cocktails (GBP9) has turned its 14 outlets around London into sought-after destinations. A Brooklyn-esque look also plays into it: outside, abundant greenery; inside, wooden floorboards, filament bulbs and bare brick walls.
The cuts might be from the less prestigious parts of the cow, but the provenance is good: All their beef comes from small UK and Irish farms. The lean and flavorsome namesake flat iron arrives sliced on a heated stone, with a little meat cleaver instead of a classic steak knife. Fat, crisp chips (GBP4) are fried in beef drippings. The tin mugs of popcorn (to start) and cones of vanilla soft-serve ice cream with chocolate shavings (to finish) are on the house.
