Starter - Breaded butterfly king prawns with sweet chilli sauce
Main - Ribeye steak with chips (rare)
Wine - Tempranillo
Date visited - 28th April 2013
Rating - 1/5
The premise of this restaurant (part of a chain of six) is simple: Classic steak and wines with the steaks cooked anyway you like, from black to blue. Despite having a name like an episode of EastEnders with a particular focus on domestic violence, you walk into a swish reception with a curved bar that looks like a premium airport lounge.
The first thing you notice is the smell. I like my steak restaurants to smell of meat and fire, Black and Blue smells mainly of imitation leather. The staff are efficient, if a little overworked and soulless, up to the point where you try to pay and leave when it's all downcast eyes and sudden changes of direction. Food descends from the firmament via a silent dumb-waiter, adding to the overall sense of detachment.
The king prawns were satisfactory. A little dry perhaps, and more squashed than butterflied. A worthy testament to the mundanity of the menu options.
I was hoping that a specialist steak place would do a good steak. The 28-day aged Aberdeen Ribeye tasted just plain old. As if somebody had bought a supermarket steak and left it, forgotten in the bottom of a drawer. It had none of the depth of flavour that you would imagine, almost as if it had been cooked in a laboratory. No trace of juice or blood oozed from its depths, and it was chewy to the point of mild nausea. No hint of char on the outside, no hint that it had been rested. The Toyota Corolla of the steak world, if you will, except it cost a small fortune.
The house wine, some sort of Tempranillo, was reassuringly bland.
On the plus side they serve tap water in jugs with slices of lemon and ice. And the menu states that all of the 12.5% service charge goes to their staff, though judging by their faces that is all they get.
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