Pleasant atmosphere, service and decent food.
We recently dined here and must say the overall experience was quite pleasant. The restaurant setting is rather dark as per all Meat and Wine co’s I’ve been to in the past with just the right amount of lighting on most of the tables. The service was good and they were quite responsive. Our waiter was informative and catered to our needs – wasn’t a fan of him trying to up sell an aged rib-eye steak to me because they were out of stock on the wagyu but hey, isn’t that their purpose to up-sell? I really wanted my wagyu fix though…
Food: We had the Szechuan calamari and beef tartare for entree – Calamari was cooked nicely and wasn’t stringy, the batter was light with a hint of Szechuan spice although I would’ve liked more. Nam jim sauce was similar to a Thai sweet chilli sauce. Beef tartare was nice although it was lacking a bit of flavour – perhaps some capers or a bit of diced Spanish onion could fix. It was a decent serving for 2 people but we ran out of crostini’s.
For mains we had 1/2 a rack of ribs and new york steak with mushroom and hot african chilli sauces. The ribs we’re quite tasty and moist, the bbq glaze was very flavoursome with a nice smokey-ness to it. The steak was cooked perfectly (medium-rare), would’ve preferred a bit more fattiness to the cut but overall it was a decent cut which wasn’t too dry. I felt the mushroom sauce was lacking a bit of flavour, nothing a bit of salt can’t fix and the chilli sauce had a good kick.
For dessert we shared a sticky date pudding which was moist and not too sweet – the vanilla ice cream helped cut the sweetness for the sticky date in which we thought would’ve been a heavy dessert.
Overall the experience was very good and will need to go back to try the other dishes – especially the wagyu.