🍖🍟🇬🇧Cheap and good steak at London!! 🍖🍟🇬🇧

Looking for cheap and good steak!? Look no further then FlatIron!.

Flat Iron launched onto London’s restaurant scene in summer 2012 via a residency at The Owl and Pussycat pub in Shoreditch.

The brainchild of Charlie Carroll (former operations advisor at Wahaca), it’s aim was not just to serve excellent steak but to do so at an affoordable price.

He achieved this by making use of a hitherto underrated cut: flat iron. It’s well-marbled, juicy and tender, but more difficult to butcher and was — at the time, at least — little known in the UK.

At that first pop-up, the steaks went on the menu at just £10 a pop (including a side salad) and as the third restaurant opens, it’s still that price today.

Style and surrounds

A unifying feature of the first two Flat Iron restaurants, on Beak Street and Denmark Street, both in Soho, is size — they’re teeny. It’s a different story here; the two-floor Covent Garden site provides over 4,000 sq ft of room and allows for 180 covers.

The extra room not only means you’re more likely to get a table (there are no reservations) but also allows for some new features — such as a glass-fronted butchery room that shows off the beef as you enter, a working on-site microbrewery and an ice-cream counter.

On the menu

First and foremost there’s the £10 flat iron steak — juicy, richly flavoured and tender, served medium-rare. If you’ve been to a Flat Iron restaurant before, you’ll know what to expect. If you haven’t, then come and try it.

New for this flagship site is a host of special cuts, straight from the butchery. Check the blackboard or ask your waiter what’s on — we tried a tender sirloin with unctuous melting fat and a vivid pink, juicy chateaubriand, both from a 50-day-aged Galloway cow.

The specials are charged per weight and ended up around the £30 mark, but the gutsy flavours are on a par with those of London’s higher-end steak spots, such as Hawksmoor.

Sides include outstanding potato action in the form of beef dripping chips, along with some salad and veg options.

Something sweet

Here’s a nice touch. Flat Iron doesn’t do desserts as such (nor starters), but when you pay you’ll get given an itsy metal butcher’s cleaver of the sort you’d wear on a charm bracelet. If you can bear to part with it, you can hand it in on your way out in exchange for a salted caramel ice cream in a cornet to go.