Good Steak / Bad Steak - 13th of July, 2009

On a beautiful Monday evening, Mike and I met up for a bite to eat as we wandered through the streets of Chelsea. We eventually settled on The Bluebird Café, which sat impressively at the forefront of a shopping complex. We went for a cracking crayfish salad to start, which whetted our appetites for the cote de boef we had ordered to share.

The dish was unappealing at first. I'm never a huge fan of steak on the bone, but this had been sheared into thick strips, and cooked very unevenly from the look of things. There also appeared to be lots of fat on it, which can sometimes be alright, but when you can see it so clearly to start with, it's a tough one to look past.

The steak was as we had feared: tough, fatty, unevenly cooked and cold by the end because it took us a while to hack the strips of meat apart. The strange thing is: it was really tasty. As much as you really had to work for this food, the taste of it was almost reward enough. The chips were alright too.

Desserts (as they often do) saved the day. A fine, simple chocolate tart and a pretty extravagant barbecued peach topped things off nicely. But I would advise the Bluebird Café to brush up on their steaks pretty quickly, because if the taste of the one we tried was anything to go by, it could be a pretty fine meal when done right.