The Meat Co (Restaurant)

Top 10 things we discovered about The Meat & Wine Co restaurant:

1) Step inside from the brightly lit facade of the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush and you feel like you've entered a dusky underworld as imagined by someone with a lizard fetish: full of heat, brimstone-hued lighting, mildly hypnotic music and many, many gecko silhouettes covering the walls.

2) It's a South African take on an American-style steakhouse, serving British beef to mostly Middle Eastern diners, and doing it very well indeed.

3) Like your cocktails sweet? They certainly do here. The gooseberry martini tastes exactly like a melted Calypso ice cream with a shot of gin. If sweet is not your thing, no matter, just tell the barman you’d like your drink sour and he'll oblige so that your mouth will pucker up like your ancient Aunt Ivy moving in for a smooch.

4) There's a lift to convey m'lord from the bar to the dining room, but you'll want to expend the energy on the stairs, so you can justify ordering the Flinstonian-sized portion of roasted bone marrow to start....

5) .....which you'll want to eat with their cracking homemade potato and onion bread, by the way.

6) Truly devoted customers have the honour of having their name engraved on a steak knife mounted on the wall, to use exclusively each time they fly in from Abu Dhabi.

7) Did you know that there is such a thing as halal wagyu steak. Yes, beef famous for being fed beer, but without the alcohol. And it's superb.

8) No one here will sneer if you order something other than wine to go with your meal (such as the fab South African cider). In fact, they won't even blink at a fleet of 30-something businessmen in suits drinking sticky pink cocktails with their £62 steaks. They'll even stick a sparkler in it, if it's your birthday.

9) Frosted glass toilet doors sound like a great idea until you remember it's a unisex bathroom and the shadow that has just loomed into view attempting to open your cubicle is a man.

10) Nelson Mandela's favourite dessert was (apparently) malva pudding; an old-fashioned steamed sponge cooked here to a degree of such sugary deliciousness it could make any Englishman weep into his sticky toffee pudding....read more