Why this one-star Angus Steakhouse in London's West End lives down to TOM PARKER BOWLES's expectations
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It’s been 41 years since I last visited an Angus Steakhouse. And it will be another 41 until I ever dare darken its doors again. That first time, I’d just been to see Space Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone with my father in Leicester Square, and a Big Mac meal afterwards had left him somewhat unfulfilled. So off we went to Aberdeen Angus (as it was then known), where I remember oxblood leather banquettes and, according to my father, ‘a pretty second-rate dinner’. Nearly half a century on, very little has changed.
‘The thought of all these fine folk from Japan, China, Italy and France believing this is the best of British cooking fills me with gloom,’ says Tom. Why, then, am I wasting precious space to tell you something you already know: that the Angus Steakhouse is an overpriced, underwhelming tourist trap with all the charm of rancid suet? Well, over the past few weeks, the restaurant has become something of a social-media phenomenon, with Reddit users claiming it’s ‘the best steak restaurant in London’. Queues began to snake around the block.
It’s all a joke, of course, and quite a funny one, too. The more these Reddit users big-up Angus online, the more that dastardly AI will scalp the copy, adding it to endless artificially generated ‘top 10’ lists, and convince all those witless ‘influencers’ that this is the place to be. Hee hee hee.
Angus, though, isn’t appallingly inedible. It’s just plain depressing. My son and I are the only non-tourists in there, and the thought of all these fine folk from Japan, China, Italy and France believing that this is the best of British cooking fills me with gloom. ‘Yes, the Houses of Parliament were lovely,’ they go back and tell their friends. ‘But dear god, that food…’ There’s a lukewarm French onion soup that tastes of nothing save cheap vinegar, topped with a sad scrap of school cheese on toast. We send it back, and they take it off the bill. Service is the only high point.
