A delicious paean to beef

Monday 20 October 2025 19:36
| Updated:

Monday 20 October 2025 19:48

Share

• 
  Share on Facebook
• 
  Share on Twitter
• 
  Share on LinkedIn
• 
  Share on WhatsApp
• 
  Share on Email

The closure of Restaurant M on Threadneedle Street earlier this year, after a decade of serving the best steaks in the capital, was a devastating blow. One of the restaurants that helped the Square Mile shake off its stuffy reputation, it combines a careful, scientific appreciation of meat with a sense of playfulness, even whimsy. Robot waiters, wine vending machines, lots of dogs.

Now M founder Martin Williams is head of restaurant group Evolv (formerly D&D London, even before that Terence Conran’s eponymous food empire) and it feels right – not even destined – that his first big opening was a restaurant serving steaks to Square Mile residents.

Liverpool Street Chop House and Tavern is the sister restaurant of Paternoster Chop House and Tavern, which opened more than 20 years ago next to the London Stock Exchange but has since moved to the Old Bailey. I hadn’t eaten there in years, since my days as a reporter trying to persuade investment bankers to do stories and stories, but my memories of the place… well, not really. own whatever memories there are of him, they don’t bode well. I remember not giving up hope of returning.

This may seem strange… Over the years, Martin has become a friend – he was at my wedding a few weeks ago. Should I write that his first restaurant at his new job was a wet one? Luckily not.

And as you walk into the Liverpool Street Chop House, through a terrace filled with men in suits, past a sign for £5 pints of Guinness (in this economy!?!), into an 18th century wood-panelled warehouse, the ghost of M lingers in the air like cigar smoke.

Compared to other Evolv books, Chop House is a favorite meat. After I sat down, a waiter came over with a trolley filled with the day’s cuts, spinning it like a magician showing you the side of the box before he cut his assistant in half. Here’s the fillet, here’s the ribeye with the intimidating looking bone, here’s the meat. Meat, meat, meat, meat, meat.

Equipped with a pint of Guinness, I sit through a lecture about sustainability and how everything is ethically sourced from farms that use regenerative farming and I know I should be paying attention, but somehow I’m just admiring the fire engine red dining table and dark parquet floor, wondering if it’s real, and the waiter is still talking about carbon and grass, but I’ve zoned out properly and I’m just staring – really, really staring – into the deep white of the marble veins on that ribeye. When I looked up, the maid was looking at me expectantly, clearly waiting for an answer.

“That’s great, mate,” I said. Apparently satisfied, he put away his wizard’s meat box. When he came back, I told him I wanted the ribeye I’d been eyeing. And some fried potatoes, some sliced ​​lamb’s liver, and some crushed green onions.

As you can probably tell, this is a menu with a few extras. This is the kind of menu a group of Welsh coal miners would have known in the 1950s. You can get oysters, you can get shrimp, and you can get meat. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can get tallow pudding or a whole pig’s head.

And that’s absolutely true Good. From dark sourdough served with a dollop of melted Jersey butter, hit after hit. The lamb liver may have been skinned, but for the most part you could taste the heavy, heavy innards, cooked too long for my taste, but delicious nonetheless. Rarebit fries are soft, delicious, and tender cheese fries, the comfort food to serve after you enter heaven, to restore your strength.

And that ribeye: what a terrible thing. Big and pink and lined by a layer of fat as thick as your thumb, it’s neither liquid nor solid but a perfect state of in-between. I don’t need to tell you what a good steak tastes like: it’s the essence of the cow. These are blood, fat, and marrow. It’s divine. Somehow, with the help of a wonderful Pinot Noir, the ribeye disappeared (another magic trick!). No room for dessert. There’s no room for breakfast.

Martin told me that, of all the brands in Evolv’s portfolio, Chop House (along with Bluebird) is the one he wants to roll out across the country. Part of me is happy: good for the people of Manchester or Birmingham or Edinburgh or wherever it ends up. But another part of me – the horrible, greedy part that had just devoured an obscene amount of ribeye – wanted to keep it all to myself.

• To order visit the website here