Hawksmoor Seven Dials Covent Garden

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar have followed their keen noses to the much-lauded new steak house in Covent Garden, Hawksmoor Seven Dials, with a beautiful young lady friend.

MrO: The space at Hawksmoor is absolutely huge, isn’t it?
MrV: Literally cavernous. Those great brick caverns under Covent Garden still have not been fully exploited, I believe. But the din when they are full can be awful. All those shouting designers and their cackling secretaries, all that brick and stone. Dreadful cacophony.
MrO: Well it wasn’t full when we went – it was lovely and calm.
MrV: Hardly surprising for a Monday lunchtime.
MrO: One of the things I like best about it is that it is so big, they can allow a bit more space per diner than most restaurants in this part of the world. The chairs were wide and comfortable.
MrV: Yes, although perhaps they were a little low.
MrO: And the service was good.
MrV: As I said, it was Monday lunchtime – not as if the staff were particularly pushed, was it?
MrO: But most importantly, I thought the food was first class.
MrV: It was admittedly outstanding.
MrO: The Dorset crab on toast was very good indeed.
MrV: So were our young lady friend’s Plum Pudding ribs. I had thought that they would be covered in some sort of plum sauce, but apparently Plum Pudding is the name of the pig breeder.
MrO: She was rather defeated by the enormity of the starter. Fortunately you were able to eat much of it for her.
MrV: yes, I’m good like that. My clams in bacon broth were very ine with one reservation – the bacon bone broth. Had it been any stronger, I wouldn’t have been able to taste the clams. But it was completely overwhelmed by the big chunk of strong bread served with it.
MrO: Sounds like your problem was with the bread, not the broth.
MrV: Whatever. How was your steak? I think you and the young lady had the rib-eye?
MrO: It was sensational, although there was so much of mine I couldn’t finish it.
MrV: She didn’t have the same problem. I thought for a moment I was sharing a table with T-rex.
MrO: That’s not kind. It was delicious steak and probably not something she gets very often at her educational establishment.
MrV: They are indeed good steaks, all from the Ginger Pig company. It’s partly owned by a neighbour of mine in Yorkshire so I’ve had it often before, although never the D-rump.
MrO: What was that like?
MrV: Cheapest of the lot – only £20 – but 55-day aged and very rich in flavour, albeit expectedly chewy. One minor quibble about that: I asked for medium rare but to my mind got rare – an important distinction with the tougher cuts.
MrO: I loved the side offerings of two fried eggs, roasted bone marrow or half a lobster.
MrV: Yes, I wanted them all but settled for the bone marrow, which was fabulous. My triple-fried chips were slightly chewy. Perhaps they were meant to complement the rump.
MrO: Well, I did warn you that you’d be better off with the beef dripping chips – brilliantly crispy. The puddings were extraordinary though, weren’t they?
MrV: It says a great deal of our sophistication that we essentially ordered steak and ice cream for lunch.
MrO: The young lady was slightly more sophisticated than that – she had peanut shortbread with her ice cream.
MrV: And had the decency not to go into anaglyptic shock or whatever it’s called. Most young people today seem to carry a loaded syringe with instructions to stab them in the heart if they so much as smell a peanut.
MrO: Anyway the shortbread was very good as was the salted caramel ice cream.
MrV: it was a bold ice cream – most chefs are a little scared of salted caramel and weaken the flavour, but not this one. I think my favourite thing of the lunch, though, was the cornflake ice cream. I am going to try it at home, as it is such a clever idea.
MrO: The Haut Batailley 2004 was delicious. What did you think of the value?
MrV: Well, it retails at not much more than £26 so £95 is looking on the steep side, particularly when you factor in the restaurant’s trade or bulk discount.

Mr Oil, Mr Vinegar and their young lady friend had three courses each plus three glasses of Chablis, a bottle of fine claret and some mineral water and coffee at a total cost of £310.

Hawksmoor Seven Dials
11 Langley St.
London
WC2H 9JG

+44 207 420 9390

sevendials@thehawksmoor.com
http://www.thehawksmoor.co.uk/