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Jimi Famurewa reviews Mayfair's Gridiron and discovers London's best chicken butter sauce

Lobster, garlic and sea herbs: Gridiron
Lobster, garlic and sea herbs: Gridiron

The Met Bar was a place that — save for a bulletproof fake ID and the wholly unlikely prospect of a family friend in the Primrose Hill set — I could never have visited in its prime. But I certainly knew about it, that mythical members-only playpen where the Gallaghers and Kate Moss and other people I had seen on TFI Friday purportedly got up to things my 14-year-old brain could only partially compute.

And now — aboard the unbreakable wave of Nineties revivalism — the venue has been reborn as Gridiron; a new grill restaurant conceived by the hospitality equivalent of a rock supergroup (Hawksmoor’s Richard H Turner consulting, The Clove Club’s Colin McSherry head cheffing, Three Sheets bar’s Venning brothers cocktailing). Here, then, is a late-night venue — butch and broodingly dark, with matte banquettes, crimson stools and a long marble-topped counter facing the leaping flames of the open kitchen — more in step with our food-obsessed times. A place to inhale crackling-topped Tunworth mash potato or savour a miso-spiked White Russian, urged on by the hellraising ghosts of Britpop past.

I met my pal Jonny there for Friday dinner and we started with the unusual, briny chill of a pickled onion Martini each (Jonny, I should note, wasn’t as into it as I was) before charting a fairly thorough path through a menu littered with smartly modernised takes on steakhouse mainstays. Glistening, powerfully gamey slices of house-made duck sausage came beneath thick, salty clods of olive crumb and nifty cubes of plum. Short rib Kiev was a golden-breaded boulder of herbed meat alongside the vivid green, revelatory freshness of parsley emulsion and ribbons of gently pickled carrot.

A pale XO — that shrimpy, pungent Cantonese liqueur — worked well on springily fresh, deftly wood-roasted scallops; leek came blackened and slopped in the caramelised glory of brown butter and hazelnuts; and Barnsley hogget chop had its scorched flavour amplified by a little dissolving crown of anchovies. But of the mains, it was the roast turbot that truly floored me; a hefty wedge of fish, coaxed by heat to that mystical sweet spot of bone-sucking succulence and served on a lavish, outrageously creamy puddle of chicken butter sauce. That we requested a couple of spoons to shamelessly slurp up every atom from the bowl — even in full view of our ritzy-looking neighbours at other tables — tells you how fantastic this stuff was.

The kitchen view at the Gridiron (Gridiron)
The kitchen view at the Gridiron (Gridiron)

We finished, somewhat giddy, with a serviceable sticky toffee pudding and devils on horseback, reborn as glinting slivers of lardo around squidgy, giant prunes. The evening’s snags (no bread, somewhat stingy sides of glazed carrot and three-layered, beef dripping galette potatoes that I would have happily swapped for a tin bucket of oven chips) were hardly deal-breakers. But they do give a sense of why, despite parting with (oof) more than £200, we did not exactly waddle off into the drizzly night feeling properly stuffed.

Yes, we had those Martinis and an obliging, berry-fresh bottle of 2017 Pannell Garnacha from wine writer Fiona Beckett’s characterfully curated list. But that doesn’t fully neutralise the sting of a bill that — despite the east London roots of some of Gridiron’s creative team — feels unmistakably Mayfair. In many ways, the financial velvet rope here may be the one continued link to the Met Bar. Only, rather than access to a gilded hotel bar and a chance to possibly stand near one of the Appleton sisters, nowadays £200 gets you buttery cuts of griddled meat and cleverly rehabilitated 1970s canapés and — oh, God — that delectable, dunk-me-in-a-pool-of-it chicken butter sauce. I know how I’d rather spend the cash.

What Jimi ordered

  • 1 Duck sausage £8

  • 1 Short rib Kiev £8

  • 1 Scallops XO £12

  • 1 Burnt leeks £9

  • 1 Barnsley hogget £28

  • 1 Roast turbot £38

  • 1 Beef dripping potatoes £6

  • 1 Grilled carrots £5

  • 1 Sticky toffee pudding £9

  • 1 Lardo devils £7

  • 2 Pickled Martinis £27

  • 1 Bottle of Pannell Garnacha £48

Total £205

Gridiron, 19 Old Park Lane, Mayfair, W1 (020 7447 1080; gridironlondon.com)