Heliot Steak House (Restaurant)

Top 10 things you need to know about Heliot Steak House in Leicester Square:

1) The restaurant is actually inside the Hippodrome casino, the madness of which you’ll have to navigate to reach to the relative calm of Heliot.

2) I say relative because, while the restaurant itself has a calm air of black-leathered sophistication (minus sporadic dropped crockery), this perception is oxymoronic to the hectic view across the restaurant’s veranda.

3) Below the dimply lit restaurant, which hugs one side of the Hippodrome’s dome, creating a crescent of wood, steel and glass, is an almost circus-like scene.

4) Shimmering sequin-clad girls provocatively wave arms of feathers, beseeching gamblers to distraction and subsequently to a lighter pocket. Whoops, gasps, jubilation and salutations create a symphony with an unpredictable jazz-like rhythm. It’s both exciting and discombobulating at once.

5) And that’s what Heliot is at its core; a dining experience within an entertainment destination.

6) But what of the restaurant? Would you make it both the experience and the destination, choosing just to visit the Hippodrome for dinner and negate all its other seduces?

7) Probably not. The restaurant bills itself as having the ’best value USDA prime steak in town’ but value is only value when the product is good. At £21 for a 10oz fillet steak it certainly is cheap compared to the godfathers of steak, Hawksmoor, but £21 suddenly feels expensive when I don’t finish my meal; not because I’m full but because I really don’t fancy another mouthful. This is very unusual behaviour; I love steak, and I particularly love fillet steak, just not this fillet, on this night.

8) The rest of the food on offer at Heliot receives a similar lukewarm reception from me; the promising scallops also fell below expectations in their slightly chewy, tasteless reality.

9) What Heliot does know, however, is cocktails. There is a large selection, and you can work your way through the list secure in the knowledge that each will have been mixed, shaken and stirred in the right way.

10) Hedge your bets and make a pit stop at Heliot while combining your evening with a cheeky bet and a few hours in the Hippodrome Live club watching cabaret, sexy burlesque or listening to jazz. Holistically, as part of an evening out at the Hippodrome, Heliot is worth a visit. By itself, it’s definitely the house and not you that wins. ...read more