Sluttishly Savoury: The Door Oyster Bar and Grill, Cornhill, London

It's not often that you have an excuse to go and eat oysters and the most incredible steak of your life. But I decided last Tuesday that I didn't need an excuse. That it was Tuesday was good enough for me.

So my date and I headed out to the Square Mile for a classy bit of action at the very glamorous The Door Oyster Bar and Grill, which I will warn you now is mainly a treat for carnivores. With no fewer than seven different steaks on the menu, I knew from the start what I was after: a Wagyu steak, lovingly fed with beer and massaged daily to create a wonderfully tender, juicy steak. But more on that later.



We arrived at a rather unfashionably late 9.45pm for dinner, and the maitre d' informed us we were going to have to hurry up and eat, because the kitchen was about to close. In the end however, we weren't rushed at all and had wonderful attentive service, with plenty of time to admire the darkly sexy surroundings, all dark wood and gold mosaic tiles.

But first, we kicked off with a dozen Kumamoto oysters, a Japanese variety I'd never tried before, and a lovely dry glass of house champagne. They were the firmest, juiciest, most flavoursome oysters I'd had in a long time, and I didn't want them to stop coming. But like all good things, they had to come to an end, and it was on to the star of the show, the meat.

The waiter recommended us a great bottle of Malbec that was impressively priced, so we decided to blow the budget on two enormous Wagyu steaks at a very spendy £42 each, along with chunky fries, buttered spinach and bearnaise and peppercorn sauce. I don't know how I'll ever go back to eating a normal steak that you have to cut with a knife and fork, because this steak was so succulent and tender it just fell apart at the touch of a knife. It was like cutting through warm butter, and it literally melted in the mouth.

The vegetarian offerings looked excellent too - so don't be afraid of dragging along a veggie mate or partner. Although the sight of the steaks might be enough to convert the weak-willed!

We polished off with dessert, not so much because we needed to, but because we could. The strawberry pavlova was squishy and crunchy and creamy as these things should be, and the dark chocolate mousse just beautifully rich.




I won't lie; The Door Oyster Bar and Grill is crazy expensive. But if it's your special birthday or anniversary, and someone else feels like treating you, then this is a place that'll make you feel incredibly spoilt in beautiful surroundings. Run there, and eat steak!