The Flat Iron experience - anything but flat

I recently had the pleasure of having a meal up in London with one of my daughters. Until recently the default fare would have been something like T. G. I. Friday's, and being a sucker for US food, however chainified, I wouldn't have complained. But as my offspring are now adult(ish) and sophisticated, it was suggested that we try a trendy London restaurant.

Of itself, this was a bit worrying, as trendy usually means expensive, but I was assured that in the case the main courses come in at a wallet comforting £10 a head. So my only remaining concern was a review I read, which said that the writer was the only person in the place over 30. This turned out to be approximately true for me too, but as it happened it didn't matter and I had a great meal.

The venue is Flat Iron, in Beak Street, just off Regent Street, where you'd expect to pay tourist prices. But this is an ex-popup restaurant with rather original ideas of how to behave. It's no booking, which is actually an advantage if you are prepared to eat at an off-peak time. I've heard of people waiting 2 hours for a table in the evening, but we turned up 5 and were seated straight away (it was getting quite busy by 6).

Said seating is on shared tables, most of six, though there was at least one four. The gimmick, if you want to call it that, is that the menu only has one main plus a special. The main is a flat iron steak, not one of the more expensive cuts, but tasty and a bargain at £10. I went for the special, which is sometimes a different cut of steak (this isn't a place for veggies), but on our day was an excellent burger, with plenty of shallots and a béarnaise sauce.

The main - flat iron steak

The main comes with a tiny dressed salad, and there are optional sides of chips and a couple of veg - and that's about it. But it really was good, and came in with drinks at around £20 a head. Oh and there's a nice little pot of seasoned popcorn while you are waiting for the food.

The place has a good feel to it too, very friendly staff, and a dinky oddity of providing a small meat cleaver instead of a knife.

I rarely bother to write up restaurants, but this was both different enough, and likely to put me off if I hadn't been forced to go, that I think it's worth a mention - and worth a try.

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...

Search This Blog