The Best Local Steak Restaurants

A former Shoreditch pop-up and current Soho resident, Flat Iron does the business for a crisp tenner and if you’re happy to wait half an hour or so, you’ll find one of London’s best steaks. The menu has one thing on it (steak) and one price (£10) and you will do very well to find better value for money in the entire city.

The flat iron steak is a relative newcomer to the tried and tested cuts of beef you’ll find all over London but you’ll be an immediate convert. There are no reservations at Flat Iron, you rock up, put your name down and go and grab a drink somewhere.

When you get back, all you need to do is decide how you want your steak cooked and order the triple-cooked chips with a side of creamed spinach and you’re good to go. Refectory tables and bare brick walls emphasise the New York influences and for high-quality dining at its most basic, Flat Iron is the place.

Just a few minutes’ walk from Covent Garden station, Hawksmoor Seven Dials has become one of London’s ‘go to’ steak restaurants for carnivores who know their steak.  Excellent service, an underground barrel-cellar feel and more than a hint of a testosterone-fuelled ‘man eats meat’ vibe, Hawksmoor satisfies even the most discerning cravings.

With all the dry-aged meat coming from Ginger Pig, one of the UKs most highly respected producers, the Porterhouse is the jewel in this particular crown but the Fillet, Bone-in Prime Rib, T-Bone, Rib-Eye and the 55-Day Dry-Aged Rump are equally as mouth-watering (albeit not the cheapest you’ll find in London!).

With superb sides and a cocktail list that would sit comfortably in any of Covent Garden’s top bars, Hawksmoor’s own tagline of ‘the best steak restaurant in London’ is hard to argue with.

Goodman is a proper New York steakhouse in the middle of London. It’s owned by Russians, serves meat of the highest quality from the UK, the US, Italy and elsewhere and wines from all over the world. The charcoal ovens use sustainable wood blends and are kept at a scorching 375-400°C and every single piece of hand-cut meat that comes out of the kitchens is dry-aged on-site. This is a decadent steak restaurant with a high-end club vibe where £2,000 bottles of wine are regularly ordered.

The usual prime cuts of spectacularly flavoursome and tender beef are all well represented including the Porterhouse, Bone-in Sirloin and Rib-Eye, the New York Sirloin and the Fillet but they’re not cheap. A Lake District Grass-Fed Fillet is £45 but you’ll know where that extra money went when you take your first bite.

The truffle chips are as indulgent as it’s possible to get and if you’re looking for a dining experience rather than just a meal out, Hawksmoor ticks all the right boxes.

Sounding more like a wholesale butcher, Zelman Meats is run by the same lot who own Goodman and Burger & Lobster and the front page of their website says ‘We cook beef.  That’s all we do.’ If that’s all they do, they better do it well. They do. Very, very well.

The menu, such as it is, offers diners three things. A sliced picanha (a popular cut from Brazil that we call the rump), a sliced chateaubriand and smoked short ribs. That’s it. They do triple-cooked chips and very cool sides such as aubergine with harissa and courgette with feta cheese and for dessert you can have Will’s Nan’s apple pie with ice cream.

The meat is charged by weight and the vibe is industrially buzzy. The steaks are simply superb and superbly simple – just how true meatheads like it.

Even though Gaucho is a chain covering most of London, Charlotte Street’s spiral staircase leads you down to a cowhide-covered slice of contemporary Argentina from where you can indulge in 35 day wet-aged cuts of beef you’ve never heard of but when you taste them for the first time, you’ll remember them forever.

The Lomo (fillet), Ancho (rib-eye), Cuadril (rump) and Chorizo (sirloin) are staples. You can also enjoy, amongst other delights, spiral-cut Lomo steak marinated in garlic, parsley and olive oil; the Entraña Fina, marbled skirt steak in a delicious marinade and a three-cut tasting plate as well as steaks for sharing including the 1.2kg Beef Sampler at a wallet-busting £99.

All the meat is sourced from cows reared in the Pampas, an area of the Argentine lowlands famous for its fertile soil. The usual sides are served with style and flavour and if you’re looking for steak served how it should be, Gaucho is the place for you.

We can’t claim to have written this line of outstanding copy describing Shaka Zulu in Camden but it’s perfect: take your tastebuds on safari. Shaka Zulu is a South African ‘braai’ (literally ‘to grill’) restaurant – one of London’s very best and most certainly its largest – and as well as a fine selection of outstanding beef including the classic sirloin, rib-eye, fillet, Chateaubriand and a colossal 900g T-Bone for two, the real jewels are the game meats.

Steak doesn’t always have to be beef and here at Shaka Zulu you can find such delights as zebra, crocodile, ostrich, wild boar, springbok and buffalo ribs as well as the King Shaka Game Board and a good selection of fish and seafood.

When dinner’s done, check out the 20-ft high warrior statues, the carved wooden murals covering the walls and have a drink at the Champagne Bar for a real taste of the Rainbow Nation.

STK at the ME hotel serves top-notch USDA Prime beef but it’s not all about acronyms here. Think Ibiza-style neon, a clubby feel and some of the juiciest steaks in London. Oddly for a restaurant, it describes itself as ‘female-friendly’ and their website proclaims that STK is ‘not your Daddy’s steakhouse’ (we’re not entirely sure what that means either). The ambition is as high as the prices and you can choose from small, medium or large steaks with all the classics represented including the quite stunning Japanese Wagyu at £40 per 100g.

A review in the London Evening Standard described the interior as both Kanye West’s dining room and a blinged-up first-class airport lounge and while there’s a decent choice of non-meat options, if you want a good coconut-fried halibut, go somewhere else.

STK is all about the steak and the pretentiousness, going as far as suggesting that ladies throw on an LBD and heels but if you look past the possibility of running into footballers and pop stars, you’ll eat an exceptional steak and that’s the point, isn’t it?

CUT London is legendary American restaurateur Wolfgang Puck’s first foray into Europe and while it came with a massive dose of hype, especially as it’s located in one of London’s swankiest new hotels called, rather uninspiringly 45 Park Lane. Original Damien Hirst art adorns the walls and beautifully high-cheekboned staff adorn the marble floors (seemingly chosen for their prettiness over their experience in restaurant management) but when all said and done, it’s the steak that you’ll remember.

The 35-day Black Angus beef from Creekstone Farms in Kansas is superb and is no more expensive than any other top-end steakhouse in London but the Filet Mignon and Rib-Eye from Queensland in Australia at £86 and £92 respectively is on the expensive side.

That’s until you get to the 8oz Wagyu Kagoshima rib-eye from Japan which, at £140 is eye-wateringly expensive but is a taste sensation and one of the finest cuts of beef in the whole world.

The good people at bookatable.co.uk voted the Heliot Steak House as the best steak restaurant in London for a very good reason. The steaks are superb. The restaurant overlooks the main gaming floor of the Hippodrome Casino in Leicester Square and boasts 6-8 week-aged USDA Prime beef with cuts including Rump, NY Strip, Fillet, Rib-Eye and T-Bone that are packed full of flavour.

You don’t have to have steak but our advice would be to have steak. The menu is great but if you’re coming to a restaurant with accolades for the quality of the steak, it seems a shame not to. The sides are equally as impressive with the star turn being the ridiculously indulgent Millionaire’s Mac ‘n’ Cheese topped with a poached duck egg and black truffle.

You have to be 18 to eat here on the basis that it’s in a casino but the noise and views of the gaming floor offer you a unique experience unmatched in London.