Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

This swanky Belgravia steak house is a US import, modelled on the classic formula that has fed generations of Americans in New York and New England. These places tend to be simple, affordable and unpretentious. Palm is none of these things.

The first Palm was established in New York in 1926 and by the time I lived in the Big Apple in the 1980s, it had become a place for Wall Streeters to show off. Since then it has become a chain with a score of branches across North America. The interior of this London outpost is intended to evoke New York high society in Palm’s heyday, with its caricatures of ‘celebrity’ customers on the walls, plus classic, solidly-made fixtures and fittings.

We started on a high with an excellent basket of breads. Shrimp cocktail (£13) consisted of naked, fridge-cold jumbo prawns served with a bowl of spicy tomato dip, crackers and grated horseradish in the New England way. Crab cake (£11.50) was also a good version, packed with crab meat and served with a mango salsa.

The already steep pricing ramps up for main courses. The cheapest, smallest 7oz filet mignon (tenderloin) costs £31, while New York sirloin costs £49 per steak or more – 50 per cent or so dearer than most of its London competitors and around pound-for-dollar the Palm’s prices in New York.

So is its grain-fed, imported, aged US beef worth the premium? No. Anyone who has read Michael Pollan’s ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’ will be under no illusions that US grain-fed beef, USDA or otherwise, is the best. The fact is, we produce better quality, grass-fed beef right here in the UK for a fraction of the cost of these imports.

So does perfect cooking justify the high pricing? Our ‘medium rare’ fillet (which should be very pink in the centre, brown towards the edges) was actually cooked ‘medium well’ – not pink at all. Was it particularly tasty? Fillet is tender, but rarely the tastiest cut – especially if cooked too much, as this was.

Palm seems geared to appeal to wealthy but unadventurous eaters. We could almost hear the pity in our waitress’s voice as we ordered tap water, the cheapest steak and the cheapest bottle of wine we could find (£19). The bill for two, which included a small lobster (2lb; £40) and a key lime pie which was unexpectedly insipid, came to £160.

Our fellow diners were American tourists, glum-looking Middle Eastern families (one group dining with their bodyguards), a rival restaurateur casing the joint, a dead ringer for Christian Bale in ‘American Psycho’, and assorted City folk who had fallen for the hype.

Time Out London issue 2026: June 18-24 2009