Goetz B.
Yelp
To sum it up: Excellent wine, great steak, good fries, ok peppercorn sauce, huge dessert. Friendly and professional staff.
JW Steakhouse is a steak restaurant located inside the Grosvenor House hotel, right on Park Lane. I entered through the main hotel entrance and then walked straight into the restaurant on the left. JW Steakhouse is a big dining hall dominated by dark and warm colours. I really liked the atmosphere, it was not too loud and even the muted pop music in the background was not too annoying - who doesn't like a bit of Bryan Adams classics every now and then?
The place has a nice atmosphere and staff were pretty friendly. The only apparent interior design flaw I noticed, without being too picky, was a staff corridor that opened opposite my table - that would have been fine with me, but I found it surprising that whenever the door opened, I was distracted by this bringt neon light in this white corridor, that simply did not match the dimmed lighting, warm colours and nice atmosphere in the dining hall. While this corridor might be a good example of minimal and functional design, it also seems a bit odd for such a place.
The well-trained waiter kicked off with asking me for drinks. That's always a good start. I found a Salmon Run, Riesling/Chardonnay, Finger Lakes, USA 2011 by the glass, which sounded like an interesting combination to me, so I went for that. And indeed, it was a very decent wine, I would definitely order it again. It had this typical, lovely and distinct minerally Riesling character, was easy to drink and even a bit fruity. A good choice.
I was there for an early dinner and went directly to the main courses. They have a number of different cuts and two different suppliers. As I wanted to taste their USDA meat, I ordered a small fillet steak with bourbon peppercorn sauce and salt and truffle fries.
The food was almost as good as it sounds. The steak came medium rare as recommended by my waiter and tasted great. The peppercorn sauce was a bit of a let down, for me it could have had a stronger pepper kick to it. It was not bad, but a little bit bland for a peppercorn sauce.
The chips were quite skinny and very salt and truffly. I must admit, they were bordering on being too salty, and the strong salt flavour had the potential to spoil the excellent taste of the steak. On the other side, I really enjoyed the fries, despite I later saw crispy fluffy chunky chips arriving at the next table and they also looked tempting.
For dessert I got an enormous apple pie with delicious cinnamon ice cream. The dessert was almost too big, but it tasted really good, so I could not just leave half of it uneaten...
At some point during my dinner, I noticed that I did not get any bread after I arrived. I expected a place like JW Steakhouse to server bread, but you never know - so I looked again at the menu, and also did not find the bread there. Around the same time, I saw other tables getting fresh bread rolls with butter. As you can always impress me with good bread, you can always disappoint me with no or even bad bread. When the lovely smell of fresh rolls made its way up my nose from the next table, I became a bit sad.
I asked my waiter for the bill, and not too long after, a nice girl came over and handled the payment procedure. I spotted the bread rolls on my bill and could not stop myself from mentioning that I did not get them. They are complimentary, but still. She apologised and explained, that they usually get a new batch ready just after I ordered, so they probably overlooked my order because they did not have any fresh buns at the moment.
Overall, I liked the food, my wine was excellent and I was very pleased with my waiter, the service and I think the bun mishap was managed well enough. In my opinion, JW Steakhouse is a reasonably good place to enjoy a steak.