Last Saturday for lunch, Ms B & I decided it was time for a juicy steak, so we walked the short distance over to Boisdale Mayfair, next to Marble Arch. Ms B, or voucher-chick, as her schoolfriends used to call her back in the day, had found a 50% off deal on Open Table. She had already visited the Boisdale Canary Wharf a few months ago with work colleagues and highly recommended the steaks (I had previously only been there for drinks). There are two more branches, one in Bishopsgate and one in Belgravia. Boisdale is the brainchild of self-styled enfant terrible Ranald Macdonald , a man admiringly described by Tatler, the pompously posh periodical or manicured millionaires’ magazine, as “the most politically incorrect restaurateur in Britain.” The younger of Clanranald and eldest son of the 24th chief and captain of Clanranald, Macdonald’s background sounds as if he spends his […]
Senckenbergs, Frankfurt – our Restaurant Review
I’m just back from dinner at Senckenbergs, a steak house and restaurant in Frankfurt’s Bockenheim neighbourhood. The atmosphere is more on the modern, slightly quirky, designer-elegant end of the scale, but not overly so, with the lights spreading a lovely, warm atmosphere. Service was great from the moment I entered the door. Very friendly, helpful, entertaining, even though maybe not always 100% well-versed with the usual etiquette at the pricier end of the market. After short deliberation I opted for blood sausage with lamb’s lettuce, beetroot, and potato dressing (€10.50), a Rib Eye (€34 for 300g plus €11 for every additional 100g, in my case roughly €40 for the steak, it turned out) with herb jus (€2), a side of sautéed spinach (€4), and no dessert. The Rioja (0.2l) for €9.20 did not overly excite me. The starter mainly surprised by the nearly complete absence of blood sausage. Having been […]
Block House, West End, Frankfurt
UPDATE 31.03.2019: I spent a lot of time in Frankfurt recently, staying at a hotel within 5mins walking distance from another Block House. As I’m also currently trying to move towards a keto diet, I ate at Block House about one dozen times over the past few months. Presuming the quality of Frankfurt Block Houses is similar to each other, I upgrade my rating from 2.5 to 3 out of 5. Half the time the steak was prepared extremely well (due to the fact that the meat was decent quality, but nothing special, the overall taste was just good, not special), 40% of the time it was slightly above average. 10% of the time it was slightly below average. You can watch the people in the kitchen prepare the food, and there were clear visible differences between the preparation of good steaks and average steaks. The good steaks all involved […]