Smith's of Smithfield

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar have been to the meat trading district of Smithfield, to gorge themselves upon rare steak at Smith's.

MrO: That was a very satisfactory experience.
MrV: It's a proper restaurant, all right. There's something rather magnificent about celebrating bloody meat so ostentatiously.
MrO: How was your ribe-eye? My sirloin was cooked to perfection.
MrV: Very good, although I do still become sentimental when I think of a steak I had here a few years ago. It was served with garlic spring greens and chips and was, I think, the single most delicious steak of my life.
MrO: I think I remember that. Was it the Black Welsh beef that had been aged for 38 days?
MrV: Precisely. My God but it was tasty. Such a shame they never did it again.
MrO: Oh yes, there was a peculiar complication, wasn't there?
MrV: It was so rich it stayed on the breath of the customers for several days and all their sweethearts complained that they stank of rotting carcasses.
MrO: My wife didn't complain.
MrV: I'd be very surprised if in the past 20 years your wife has been close enough to your mouth to notice - and who can blame her?
MrO: Smelly old cuts aside, John Torode has done well with this place. It is the best site in Smithfield with an excellent view and a terrace well above the soot and grime. On a warm, sunny day it can't be bettered.
MrV: I don't know how often he's cooking any more. Too much of a celebrity. I do get fed up with chefs who become too famous or busy to cook in their own restaurants.
MrO: Me too, but I have never noticed standards slipping at Smith's. On the contrary, it seems to go from strength to strength and now Torrode has opened another place somewhere in the City.
MrV: I wonder where he finds the time to oversee the quality when he's doing the Masterchef programme with that bald bloke, Greg Wallace.
MrV: He has a very strange way of eating. Have you noticed? He sort of levers the food into his mouth as if he's negotiating a sofa through a narrow doorway. Quite disgusting. We were always taught to cut up our food into bitesize pieces.
MrO; I daresay, but returning to the matter at hand, I would also add that the service at Smith's is excellent. That waiter had really taken the trouble to understand the menu, and the raw materials, and the wine list.
MrV: I couldn't fault him on his wine suggestion, although it was rather irritating that two bin ends advertised in the wine list were no longer available.
MrO: Yes but the American wine he suggested was exceptional. Smith's, it was called, by coincidence. Extremely good value at £40-odd a bottle and closer to a claret than any American wine I've ever tasted.
MrV: I tried to order some over the internet but it appears not to be readily available in the UK. The man who makes it is a gothic wine maker, whatever that may be. He's in Washington State, where gothicism is all the rage. Americans are so strange, aren't they?

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar ate two courses each and drank three bottles of wine plus coffee and one pudding, at a total cost of about £200.

Smith's of Smithfield
67-77 Charterhouse Street
London EC1M 6HJ
+44 (0) 20 7251 7950
www.smithsofsmithfield.co.uk
reservations@smithsofsmithfield.co.uk