CW Room

Steak and Company is one of those chain restaurants all over London that specialise in steak – as obvious by the name. You would expect their steak to be top of the line, or at the very least fairly well churned out considering how regularly they must make them.

Expectations

You walk into a steak restaurant and you expect a well seasoned steak cooked to your exact specifications (rare, medium, well, etc.) with a healthy portion of sides and sauce to go along with your meal. Though, I will say the expectations of sides and sauces probably depend the pricing of the restaurant.

You take your seat, place your order, and receive a meal that will put all other meat dishes to shame. Buttery, decadent, carnivorous goodness on your plate, hopefully topped with a rich mushroom sauce if you’re doing it right, and some form of potato on the side.

Reality

I really want to do my experience justice here, so I’ll need to explain it to you in sections, because this was the oddest experience of my life.

Service

This was the first week of December, and we were seated out on the patio. They had heaters working, but they didn’t cover the area we sat in.

I am not exaggerating when I say it took 45 minutes for a waiter to take our order. I’m sure they were busy on that day, but 45 minutes is a long time to watch waiters hang out with customers and joke around with staff whilst completely overlooking our table.

We were out on the full patio divided into 2 sections, and our side was neglected completely. As far as I could tell, there was no real reason for it aside from disorganisation. Whichever waiter was responsible for our section was clearly distracted.

Eventually, we managed to call over that waiter, who genuinely seemed surprised and excited to find people in his section. It was almost amusing. The man listened to our order, repeated it back to us incorrectly twice and got it right the third time after a few corrections.

It later transpired that all waiters use a little device to input orders into, but our waiter was a special one. He left, and we never saw him again.

Food

Luckily he did input our order, which honestly didn’t take too long to make. It was maybe 25 minutes before we got our food – fairly decent in terms of steak and sides.

We used the halal menu, which came with a decent selection of the original menu. A couple of steaks, an option to stone cook your steak, most sides and a whole bunch of halal cocktails, fauxtinis and spritzes.

We ordered a medium rare ribeye for myself, A well done (I know, i’m sorry) sirloin steak for my sister, sides of broccoli, garlic butter, thin fries and mushroom sauce.

Anyhow the food was very well cooked and seasoned. Mushroom sauce especially deserves its own props. The fries were wonderfully crispy and salted and the broccoli was the perfect juicy, complementary crunch.

The steak was already quite buttery, so the butter itself didn’t bring too much into the mix, but the garlic element did pack a really good punch. So, if you want more garlic on your steak, it’s a great way to go.

The drinks were amazing, except I think they could do with a little less garnish. My Southbank Martini came with a slice of passion fruit which bestowed its seeds upon my drink overtime and made for an inconvenience in sipping. I remind you, it was already freezing, so I didn’t need anymore obstacles.

Meanwhile, the Victoria’s Punch sported a full leafy thyme stem and a lemon slice on the side of the cup, both presumably to add an odour-y flavor to the drink, but only served to get in the way and poke into the drinkers eyes. I’m sure theres a better way to do this.

Overall, the meal itself was fantastic. If I could, I would only have changed the variety of drinks and sauces available.

The Harrowing Journey of the Bill

Look, I’ve never waited that long for a bill in my life. I’ve eaten out way too many times to count, but this experience with the bill is not something I’ve ever seen.

The waiter we finally managed to get a hold of to ask for our bill was a different one, because as I’ve mentioned, we never saw our waiter again. This new waiter was confused at our order and rifled through his little device to no avail.

We waited for this bill a full 30 minutes, just to get the first one. I say first because there were four versions of this bill before we got the last, mostly correct one. The whole bill experience was around 50 minutes.

The first bill doubled our order and had items from the non-halal menu on there. The second bill, again, doubled our steaks and was missing a few sides. The third bill was almost correct, but was missing a few sides. We pointed this out before we waited for our fourth bill. At last, we scanned the fourth and last bill to reveal that it was missing a side of fries.

At this point, our waiter was so confused that he asked his manager to comp our plate of fries and we finally got to go on our merry way. That was the longest time I’ve ever spent trying to pay for a meal.

I watched someone dine and dash while we waited for our third bill and strongly suspected that he did try to pay, but just couldn’t.

I’m not sure why the waiter who took our order was so distracted or what on earth he was doing, but this new waiter seemed to be aggravated by his shenanigans. He already knew which waiter it was and seemed truly weary of the position he’d been put in.

I feel for the guy, but after I had spent a cumulative total of 2 hours at this restaurant just waiting for stuff, I think my hysterical laughter attack was warranted.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the restaurant as a food chain was pretty good. Service was almost abysmal, but maybe it was just on that day, or just that waiter. Who knows. Take a trip down, try it out whenever you’re in Leicester Square and let me know how your experience goes!

Thanks for reading 🙂