Steak Heaven at May Fair Kitchen - a Return Visit

Name: May Fair Kitchen

Where: The May Fair Hotel, Stratton Street, Mayfair, London, W1J 8LT,  http://www.mayfairkitchen.co.uk/

Cost: Starters range from £7 to £16, main dishes from the grill range from £19 to £55, sides from £3 to £11.  There is a small but well considered selection of wines by the glass mostly priced at £11, and by the bottle white wines start at £34 for an Albariño from Rias Baixas, Spain, and reds at £34 for Napa Valley Merlot. 

About: The May Fair Kitchen is based on the ground floor of the swanky May Fair Hotel, on Stratton Street, between Piccadilly and Berkeley Square. The restaurant is simply but stylishly furnished with dark wood floors and panelling, grey fabrics and white linen tablecloths. 

The concept of the May Fair Kitchen is to serve the best quality meat and fish, simply grilled and served with a choice of sauces made to order. All the meat comes from Aldens Butchers, a family butcher with over 200 years of experience in sourcing the best quality produce from across the UK and Europe.  The fish and shellfish comes from James Knight of Mayfair. The vegetables all come from Watts farm, a family-run business with farms across Kent, Essex and Bedfordshire. A few months ago, I spent a couple of days behind the scenes at the May Fair Kitchen, as well as visiting Aldens and Watts farm to see the quality of the produce first hand - more about that here.

Having just heard of a change of menus at May Fair Kitchen, I decided to pay them a return visit to find out more.

What We Ate: We kicked off with half a dozen oysters (£18), served expertly shucked and cleaned (with none of the irritating fragments of shell that are so often left after opening - a minor pet hate of mine!), and with a classic red wine vinegar and shallot dressing. The oysters were terribly fresh, a very good start to our meal.

For starters, we had the steak tartare (£11) - hand chopped and served with a generous grating of Parmesan and a lovely beaten raw quail egg yolk served in the shell. It was very well seasoned, with a great texture from the hand chopping, and knowing it was from Aldens gave me confidence in its quality and safety.

Dr G had a serving of hand-dived scallops with smoked British ham and bean emulsion with fine herbs (£13).  This was well made and tasted great, but at that price tag, we had hoped for more than one and a half scallops.

My main course was grass-fed, 28-day aged, single rib steak, 20oz (£35), with a Bernaise sauce (£3), real chips (£3) and a Niçoise salad (£4.50).

These were magnificent, with superbly tender and well-flavoured beef from Aldens, this was as good as it gets!

The Bernaise was also well made and with just the right acidity. The triple fried chips were also excellent - chunky and crisp.

Dr G opted for the turbot (£38) with a sauce vierge (£3), samphire and ginger (£4.50). The fish was wonderfully textured, and the sauce vierge beautifully flavoured with chervil, but the side serving of watercress was completely undressed, un-seasoned and slightly on the yellow side of green.

For dessert we had a selection of cheeses from the cheese trolley (£12). The choices of cheeses were somewhat limited and a tad uninspiring.

This is such a pity as some restaurants' cheese trolleys in London have legendary status - think Chez Bruce. The cheese course, if offered, should be one of the most exciting courses of the entire meal.

Lovely grapes, but where is the cheese?

We also had the warm flourless clementine and chocolate cake (£8), served with Cornish clotted cream and winter brittle. We wanted to love this, but again, the dish did not quite deliver as a whole.

What We Drank: While we were deciding on our  menu, we enjoyed a glass of very well balanced Moet et Chandon 2006 (£15). We opted for a glass of Albarino (£11), with the fish dishes, with some lovely elderflower notes. For the meat dishes, we shared a bottle of La Serra Negre 2012, a carignan - garnacha blend from Herencia Altes, Spain (£50). A concentrated, purple-tinged wine with plenty of blackberry fruit and cedar notes, this lovely wine was balanced by plenty of tannin, and had great length and complexity.

Likes: The meats were superb - well sourced, richly flavoured and expertly cooked.

Dislikes: Service was friendly and attentive, but on the busy evening we were there, was a little forgetful at times - for example not offering bread or butter when we wanted it, then taking it away prematurely.

Verdict: May Fair Kitchen offers some of the best grilled steaks, fish and seafood in London. A perfect meal here starts with a platter of freshly shucked oysters, followed by the Iberian spiced chorizo and garlic tiger prawn skewers, finishing with their 20oz, grass-fed, 28-day aged, all singing, all dancing, single rib steak, heaven! Recommended.

#BehindTheScenes at The May Fair Kitchen

The newly opened May Fair Kitchen invited me to spend a couple of days with them to show me what really goes on behind the doors of a busy West End restaurant. An experience like no other I have had in my 5 years of food blogging, so how could I resist?

#BehindTheScenes at the May Fair Kitchen was an exciting 2-day project that saw me travelling around the Southeast to visit the farms and meet the families responsible for growing the vegetables and the livestock for this restaurant. I also had the opportunity to visit their meat supplier Aldens in Oxford, have a butchery demo, and back at the restaurant, shadow the Head Chef Matthew Downes during busy service hours for a day.

 May Fair Kitchen's Head Chef Matt Downes

May Fair Kitchen offers a simple dining concept: with no starters or multi-course tasting menus, it focuses on serving a single, perfectly executed dish from a choice of top quality meat, fish or seafood from the grill. An accompanying sauce and perhaps a side dish are the only other choices diners need to make.

At the heart of this restaurant’s philosophy is provenance. But why is this so important? “The food at May Fair Kitchen is all about the ingredients we get from our suppliers” Head Chef Matt Downes tells me “We try and do as little as possible to them so as to maintain their natural flavour and freshness. Knowing where our ingredients come from, and keeping tight control over their quality are key to what we do at May Fair Kitchen” he explains.

It was an early start as the May Fair Kitchen team and I set off on our first visit to Holland Farm near Oxford. Owned by Johnny Alden, this farm has been in the Alden family for generations and supplies some of the meat to the family’s butchery business. Here, we spent a couple of hours in the company of Johnny who was kind and patient enough to answer all my questions about his steers and heifers (these are male/female beef cattle, whereas the word used for dairy cattle is cow, I was surprised to learn).

Farmer Johnny Alden at Holland Farm

I learnt among many other things about the process of grading the quality of meat in the UK as cattle are slaughtered. Following slaughter, a beef sample from each carcass is scanned and scientifically analyzed to give an independent quality grading.

The quality and flavour of the steaks you prepare at home is really anyone’s guess if you are not purchasing meat from a reputable butcher or at least one who strives to retail highly graded meats.

So if you think you are about to get a terrific deal for exactly the same cut of beef you have seen dearer somewhere else, think again. Higher grades will demand higher prices and vice versa. And indeed it all comes down to provenance – knowing your suppliers and where your meat comes from will help you buy better quality meat.

Same Cut, Completely Different Beasts!

The quality of meat is not only dependent on genetics – better heritage bloodlines will yield better quality meat, but environment is also key. Cattle that are well looked after and fed, that roam freely whenever possible and are not under stress, will produce more flavoursome meat. The beef at May Fair Kitchen is sourced from family run farms where cattle are reared using traditional practices. They are given the freedom to roam and are outdoor reared for about 9 months in the year, as are those beautiful beasts I saw at Holland Farm, raised by Johnny Alden.

Beef Cattle at Johnny Alden's Holland Farm

From there we hit the road again for a visit to Aldens Butchers. The supplier for all the meat for the grill of the May Fair Kitchen, Aldens was founded in 1793 by Isaac Alden and is still owned and run by the same family.

Headed today by Matthew Alden, I was lucky enough to meet him and be shown around Aldens’ state-of-the-art, purpose-built facilities in Oxford where 4-5 tons of meat are handled every day.

Matthew Alden of Aldens Butchers, Oxford

Again, this was a fascinating experience – the sheer volume of meat under one roof was staggering. We were given a butchery demonstration by one of Alden’s master butchers. It was a privilege to be shown the quality of beef used at Aldens as well as tapping into such expert knowledge.

Butchering is an art - in addition to the rigorous training (a minimum of 5 years), this is hard labour and physically demanding. I came away from this experience with a profound respect for this skilled trade – one that I am told is sadly in short supply in the UK.

We took to the road yet again heading towards one of the Watts Farms in Orpington, Kent. Watts Farms supply all the vegetables that come into May Fair Kitchen - started by Donald Watts in 1952, it is still owned and run by the Watts family.

Today the Watts Farms have 10 different sites totaling 600 hectares spread across Kent, Essex and Bedfordshire. They produce over 60 types of produce including vegetables, fruits, salads and herbs as well as being one of the UK’s largest growers of fresh herbs and chillies.

A purple kale forest at Watts Farms

Ed Gray of Watts Farms

Back in London the next day, I made my way to Stratton Street in plush Mayfair for the opportunity to work alongside head chef Matthew Downes at the May Fair Kitchen during lunch service. Service hours are busy as I know from first hand experience, so I just hoped I would not be in the way!

Open plan kitchen at May Fair Kitchen

Chef Downes welcomed me into his kitchen and introduced me to the team on duty that day – Matt his sous-chef who has recently returned from 6 years working in Antigua, his two chef de partie Abdulla (a fellow Cordon Bleu graduate) and Pascale, and lastly Nico, a young Italian commis chef who recently joined the team.

Abdulla shucking oysters

From station to station, I shadowed each one of these guys, and was truly impressed to see the care and diligence as well as a great sense of pride that each one had while preparing their dishes.

Head Chef Matt Downes showing me the ropes at the stock section

The grill station was particularly fun – Pascale was in charge here – grilling fish or seafood and meat, and sometimes a mixture of the two as in the impressively huge tiger prawn and Iberian chorizo skewers, one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes.

Pascale in the grill station

Italian Nico, as well as being in charge of the bread rolls (these are supplied by Franconia Bread House), was also dishing out the amuse bouche – a delectable thimble of hot celeriac cream soup with a piece of salty and umami-laden blue cheese.

Nico, the the newly recruited commis chef at May Fair Kitchen

The restaurant offers a few vegetarian options, and these were being taken care of by Abdulla. I loved the presentation of his quail’s egg, blue cheese and lemon ravioli as well as the mouth-watering creaminess of the wild mushroom and truffle risotto he prepared. Perfection!

The head pastry chef for both the May Fair Hotel and Kitchen is Rana – his dessert trolley is a work of art, showing great patisserie skills and a highly sophisticated eye.

Befitting its location (the restaurant is inside the swanky May Fair Hotel), no expenses were spared in the design and look of the place. The restaurant has gorgeous wooden floors and wall paneling, marble stone tops, and huge glass windows allowing plenty of natural light to flood in.

The fish and seafood display is possibly the most impressive I have seen in London – very fresh and delivered every day, most crustaceans were displayed still alive and kicking on huge amounts of crushed ice.

After service, it was time for lunch, which I shared with Chef Matt Downes and Steven Humpherson, the restaurant’s food and beverage manager and front of house guru. Steven is responsible for training and managing the restaurant’s front of house staff – and he is doing a brilliant job, as the skilled service I was about to experience showed me. Each of the waiters has visited the restaurant’s meat, fish and vegetable suppliers just as I did, and know their provenance at first hand.

But as we all know, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So how did May Fair Kitchen’s simple, no fuss cooking approach, and their focus on provenance and quality of ingredients measure up, judged by the food on my plate?

How could I resist these bad boys?

I went for the Iberian spiced chorizo and smoked garlic tiger prawn skewers (£29). Simply grilled in paprika and garlic infused olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, these were the juiciest and possibly the most delicious surf and turf combination I have ever tried. They were so good, my stomach rumbles as I write this.

I also ordered a side of triple cooked hand-cut chips. The potatoes were cut into thick chips, steamed, deep-fried and then drained. Before serving, they were deep-fried again in duck fat giving them a wonderfully rich flavour and perfect crispness.

I thoroughly enjoyed my two days behind the scenes at the May Fair Kitchen. This is a restaurant with a vision I hope other UK establishments will follow – that of serving top quality ingredients of impeccable provenance prepared with great skill and minimal fuss. Perhaps a lesson to us all.

The May Fair Kitchen
The May Fair Hotel

Stratton Street

Mayfair

London, W1J 8LT

For reservations call: +44 (0)20 7915 3892

http://www.mayfairkitchen.co.uk/