Andy Hayler's Profile Page

I say good riddence to her, hopefully her husband will soon follow

The Electric Brasserie is on the ground floor, next and attached to the excellent Electric Cinema, and there is also a private member’s club with a separate dining room on the floor above. It is part of the Soho House group, who own the High Road Brasserie in Chiswick, and several other ventures in London and New York.  The dining room is narrow but deep, separated into two sections by an open kitchen with a few tables opposite the kitchen connecting the two areas.

The wine list fits into one closely typed page, with selections such as West Brook Sauvignon Blanc 2008 at £37 for a wine that costs £8 retail, Berberana Tempanillo 2007 was £25.75 for a wine that fetches around £8 retail, and the pleasant Valdemar Gran Reserva 2001 was £59.75 for a wine you can buy in the shops for about £17, so in general mark-ups are quite steep (remember that you have to add VAT to these restaurant prices, which are included in a price at a wine shop). The Louis Roederer Cristal 2000 at £285 is technically the bargain of the list, since it costs perhaps £260 retail these days thanks to massive price inflation in recent years due to its featuring in assorted rap videos and consequent popularity.

The simplest food here seems to be the best. It was interesting to contrast a tart of spinach, goat cheese and mushroom (£7), which was adequate but was fairly crude e.g. huge chunks of onion, rather than delicate slices (1/10), with a haddock fish cake. The latter (£5) had a crisp outer coating, well seasoned filling, and nicely cooked fish; haddock works well here, having enough flavour to come through the deep frying (easily 3/10).

A whole sea bass (£15.50) was served just as that, with no garnish other than a little lemon, but was well timed and had quite good flavour (3/10). Fish and chips (£12.50) had somewhat pale batter and a far from generous portion of fish, but at least had good chips, pleasant tartare sauce and reasonable mushy peas with a hint of mint (2/10).

Just as with other locations in this group, the food is generally simple, appealing, and competently executed, though the bill always seems rather high for what you are getting.

The huge Westfield shopping complex has around fifty places to eat, though most of these are fast food or casual places. Along the Southern Terrace are a string of restaurants, one of the first of which you come to is Meat and Wine, part of an international chain based in South Africa. Downstairs is a bar area, with a large dining room upstairs. Huge glass display cases of wine decorate the dining room, which has an open kitchen. The main room can seat up to 250 people at one time, and even on the quiet lunchtime day that I attended most of the tables were in use.

Wine selections included Marques de Riscal 2006 for £23.50 for a wine that retails at around £9, Hess Mount Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon at £52 for a wine that costs about £20 to buy, the excellent Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 at £48.50 for a wine you can pick up for around £16, and at the upper end of the list Lynch Bages 1997 for £195 compared to a retail price of around £50. This is an altogether more serious list that I was expecting, and each wine on the extensive list has brief tasting notes to describe it.

I began with peri peri prawns (£10). Peri peri is a name for a specific African chilli pepper, the “bird’s eye” and so I had expected a fairly fiery sauce, but though there was a mild chilli taste it was more a tap than a kick. The prawns themselves were cooked properly, served with rice, but I would have hoped for a more lively sauce; perhaps they have calibrated it to their expectations of what a Westfield shopper is likely to be comfortable with (1/10).

The speciality here is the meat, and the UK beef (there is also Australian beef) is supplied from a company in Leicestershire called Parker Fine Foods, using beef that has been aged at least 21 days. Alternatively there is more exotic fare in the form of springbok, kudu, ostrich or kangaroo (not sure about the geographic logic of this last, though kangaroo is a good meat to eat). I went for the UK fillet steak (£24), and this was actually very good indeed: the beef had no hint of stringiness, nice taste and was cooked exactly as I had requested it (comfortably 3/10 for the steak). Chips with it were hand-cut rather than frozen and were decent (2/10) though not as crisp as ideal; to be honest it is extremely hard to produce great chips using the double cooking method used here – triple cooked is really the only way to go. A peppercorn sauce with the steak was a little sludgy and again did not seem to me to have enough pepper flavour, though a side salad was properly dressed and pleasant.

For dessert, apple crumble was served with a little bowl of custard and cinnamon ice cream, decorated by an apple crisp. The crumble in itself was fine but unfortunately was almost cold by the time it was served (1/10 if I ignore the temperature).

The waiter I encountered was very good, and overall this place was a lot better than I really anticipated for what is essentially a steak house in a shopping mall. It is clearly doing plenty of business, and based on this experience perhaps the strategy is to try and stick as closely as possible to the good quality meat, in which case you will eat quite well.