Flat Iron

Remarkable steak restaurants | Beak St, Soho | Denmark St, Soho | Henrietta St, Covent Garden | Curtain Road, Shoreditch | Golborne Road, Notting Hill

Flat Iron Steak

http://flatironsteak.co.uk

Flat Iron Square

Flat Iron - London Restaurant Reviews | Hardens

Just off Carnaby Street, an amiable bistro (on the former site of Benja, RIP), offering a top-value steak/frites formula in a tightly-packed communal setting surprisingly evocative of Old Soho.

Though the title is presumably intended to echo the moniker of the early-wave Gotham skyscraper, it is in fact all to do with the US cut of steak they serve (known in England as a Butler's Steak) which, foodwise, is essentially all they do.

For a tenner a time, though, we doubt you'll find much better meat, certainly not in the West End.

You can have a small but tasty steak, with a (modest) bowl of very good chips, a (very small) salad, a (tiny) pot of béarnaise and a 250ml carafe of wine, all for under £20.

This amiable bistro - which, despite its name, conjures up something of the atmosphere of 'Old Soho' - seems to us to offer a great corrective.

Bar Douro, Flat Iron Square, Borough: Restaurant Review - olive ...

Growing up in Porto with the founders of Churchill’s Port in Portugal, Max has been learning the tricks of the trade since he was born, and he’s now on a mission to educate Londoners about niche Portuguese wines and ports.

After heading up a Port pop up in Soho in 2013 and executing successful supper clubs at Carousel in Marylebone and Pop Brixton in 2016, Max teamed up with Bar Douro’s head chef Tiago Santos (previously of Porto’s well-regarded waterside restaurant, Casa de Chá da Boa Nova) for a three-month residency in Porto to really get to grips with Portuguese cooking techniques and traditions.

Max speaks with great knowledge and enthusiasm about wines from Alentejo, Lisbon and The Douro Valley, along with lesser-known Portuguese winemaking regions that he aims to put on the map.

As well as charismatically imparting expert wine knowledge, Max gave us a condensed history lesson, telling tales of how Portuguese Jews hid out in the hills above The Douro and disguised game as pork sausages to keep their beliefs hidden, and of ancient pig-rearing methods to produce ham to rival Spanish Ibérico.

A lesson in Portuguese dishes, wines and history, Bar Douro is a valuable addition to South London’s newest foodie hub.

Baz and Fred's Pizza, Flat Iron Square, London: restaurant review ...

The stone-baked pizzas are cooked using a Chadwick Oven, designed by Dan Chadwick in the Cotswolds, resulting in fluffy, crunchy crusts.

Choose between a classic tomato and mozzarella; a spicy chorizo, ‘ndjua and mozzarella; a Napoli salami, pesto, chilli and mozzarella; a prosciutto, Portobello mushroom and mozzarella; or goat’s cheese, caramelised onion, rocket and balsamic.

On the goat’s cheese, caramelised onion, rocket and balsamic pizza, the cheese was tangy but not too overpowering, so the sticky sweet caramelised onions still shone through.

At Baz and Fred’s, pizzas are cooked in a Chadwick Oven (designed by Baz’s godfather).

The goat’s cheese pizza maintained its crusty base to the centre, but the prosciutto version was heavy with the toppings.

Bar Douro, Flat Iron Square, Borough: Restaurant Review - olive ...

Growing up in Porto with the founders of Churchill’s Port in Portugal, Max has been learning the tricks of the trade since he was born, and he’s now on a mission to educate Londoners about niche Portuguese wines and ports.

After heading up a Port pop up in Soho in 2013 and executing successful supper clubs at Carousel in Marylebone and Pop Brixton in 2016, Max teamed up with Bar Douro’s head chef Tiago Santos (previously of Porto’s well-regarded waterside restaurant, Casa de Chá da Boa Nova) for a three-month residency in Porto to really get to grips with Portuguese cooking techniques and traditions.

Max speaks with great knowledge and enthusiasm about wines from Alentejo, Lisbon and The Douro Valley, along with lesser-known Portuguese winemaking regions that he aims to put on the map.

As well as charismatically imparting expert wine knowledge, Max gave us a condensed history lesson, telling tales of how Portuguese Jews hid out in the hills above The Douro and disguised game as pork sausages to keep their beliefs hidden, and of ancient pig-rearing methods to produce ham to rival Spanish Ibérico.

A lesson in Portuguese dishes, wines and history, Bar Douro is a valuable addition to South London’s newest foodie hub.

Baz and Fred's Pizza, Flat Iron Square, London: restaurant review ...

The stone-baked pizzas are cooked using a Chadwick Oven, designed by Dan Chadwick in the Cotswolds, resulting in fluffy, crunchy crusts.

Choose between a classic tomato and mozzarella; a spicy chorizo, ‘ndjua and mozzarella; a Napoli salami, pesto, chilli and mozzarella; a prosciutto, Portobello mushroom and mozzarella; or goat’s cheese, caramelised onion, rocket and balsamic.

On the goat’s cheese, caramelised onion, rocket and balsamic pizza, the cheese was tangy but not too overpowering, so the sticky sweet caramelised onions still shone through.

At Baz and Fred’s, pizzas are cooked in a Chadwick Oven (designed by Baz’s godfather).

The goat’s cheese pizza maintained its crusty base to the centre, but the prosciutto version was heavy with the toppings.

Flat Iron, Covent Garden – tried and tasted | London Evening Standard

Flat Iron launched onto London’s restaurant scene in summer 2012 via a residency at The Owl and Pussycat pub in Shoreditch.

A unifying feature of the first two Flat Iron restaurants, on Beak Street and Denmark Street, both in Soho, is size — they’re teeny.

First and foremost there’s the £10 flat iron steak — juicy, richly flavoured and tender, served medium-rare.

The specials are charged per weight and ended up around the £30 mark, but the gutsy flavours are on a par with those of London’s higher-end steak spots, such as Hawksmoor.

The headline drink is Flat Iron’s own beer, which is made in partnership with Yorkshire craft brewer Copper Dragon and is a traditional Northern-style beer.

Bar Douro, London SE1: 'I have to restrain myself from licking the ...

I’m just off the plane from Lisbon when I find myself (with some difficulty: it’s hidden away in Bankside’s new Flat Iron Square complex) in Bar Douro.

But I’ve come back thrilled at the beauty of the city and starry-eyed about the food, head filled with vaguely erotic thoughts of oozing, whiffy cheeses and nutty, fat-marbled hams, of seafood, sweet and pristine, of alluring chips, yellow from their dip in seething, fragrant local olive oil.

Bar Douro offers boards of both cheeses and cured meats, so we ask if they can do us a half-and-half, which they do happily.

You can do as they do back home and have a meat sandwich – roast pork with serra cheese – for pudding, but Portuguese desserts are lush with egg yolks because the whites were used to starch wimples and headdresses in convents: here, ham-fat-laced abade de priscos and a fine pastel de nata (though it doesn’t need its accompanying cinnamon ice-cream).

Bar Douro, with its high, hard, backless stools, may not be a place to linger as we do, and the counter seating may be awkward in parties of more than three, but among the area’s collection of Turkish dumplings, Chadwick Oven pizzas, Mexican carnitas and ramen from, er, Barcelona, it shines brightest, like a Portuguese Barrafina.

Flat Iron | Restaurants in Soho, London

But on our most recent Friday night visit, the signature steak (one of two options: there was an off-menu onglet too) had been expertly cooked: beautifully scorched on the outside, and bloodily pink in the middle, service was swift and cheery, the shared-tables atmosphere lively, and even the no-bookings element a non-issue – you’re given a pager, allowing you to retreat to a local pub or nip downstairs for one of the excellent cocktails.

Despite selling itself as a ‘steak for a tenner’ joint, all the extras are, well, extra.

So if you have both chips and greens (£2.50 each), plus a sauce (£1), you’re looking at £16 before drinks and service.