Miller and Carter Where Is Beef From
Miller & Carter, Atlantic Pavilion, Albert Dock, Liverpool L3 4AF (0151 707 7877) and at 115 other locations (millerandcarter.co.uk). Starters £6.75-£9.50, mains and steaks £10.50-£31.50, desserts £5.95-£10.95, wines from £19.50
I know what you want from a review of Miller & Carter. You want venom and spleen, vented. You want to hear about the waste of cattle, slaughtered by a corporate behemoth, intent on cutting both corners and arteries. This is because you are horrid people. I am also horrid, and would glory in the evisceration of a cynical, cookie-cutter catering operation as much as the next sneering, bourgeois, fat-walleted, self-regarding metropolitan sophisticate.
You're going to be disappointed, at least in part. There's no point visiting a chain restaurant merely to thumb the thesaurus in search of 96 synonyms for "crap". But I was genuinely curious about Miller & Carter, the steakhouse chain from Mitchells & Butlers, the vast hospitality company behind brands like Harvester and All Bar One. It has yearly revenues of £2bn and makes an annual profit of roughly £300m. Given this scale some people would insist that the word "hospitality" be placed inside heavy, cast-iron inverted commas. There is no Mr Miller or Mrs Carter or vice versa, though there may well be a richly rewarded branding company somewhere.
However, when it comes to steak, Miller & Carter talk a good game: full field-to-fork traceability; all from British farms; all aged on the bone for seven days and for at least a further 21 days. They claim to serve more than 1m steaks a year, though perhaps they're being modest. Since they launched in 2006, they have grown to 116 branches. As Hawksmoor sells 750,000 steaks a year on just eight sites, we can assume this lot shift considerably more.
I went to the outpost inside the redbrick warehouse buildings at Liverpool's Albert Dock. There's a flag-stoned floor, dark wood tables, a plate-glass wall looking out over the water and a lot of very smiley people working front of house who appear to mean it. They may ask you if you've got anything nice planned for the rest of the day, without forcing your mouth into a rictus grin in response. They do not come across as staff who have been chained to a radiator for a month, while being made to watch a badly compiled customer relations PowerPoint on a loop.
The menu is a thick piece of crisp, cream-coloured card with a bit of gold embossing of the sort you get on fancy barmitzvah invitations. At the top are starters. At the bottom is the "steak experience". It's a model of conciseness. Until you turn the card over and find a terrifying array of further mains. As Groucho Marx might have said, had he been a restaurateur: "These are our dishes. If you don't like them, we have others."
You want to know about the steaks. There are the standard cuts – sirloin, rib-eye, rump and fillet – in imperial weights, presumably to give it a big old American steakhouse vibe. There are also troubling recommendations that both the rib-eye and rump should be served medium. I take that to mean, "cooked until hope has been murdered and it's just a tensed cyst of dry protein". The sirloin is recommended medium rare. Only the fillet is proposed rare.
Because I am a completist, I order the Butchers Block 26oz from the list headed "ultimate sharing experience" for £63.50. It includes rib-eye and fillet, plus rump and a marrow bone stuffed with shredded brisket. They say it's for two. It would feed three. Naturally, it arrives on a wooden board, steak knives tip-down into slots like some testosterone-drenched honour guard.
So how are these steaks? They are – wait for it – good. I would even edge towards very good. Their version of medium is my medium rare. They are seared outside and a luscious pink inside. It's also quality beef, with tension and flavour. It's a relief. Given that eating steak can be controversial – watch the comments stack up below this review online; warm your hands on their righteous anger; join in, if you have the stamina – it would be hugely dispiriting if 116 steak houses were killing the animals twice. Curiously, the fillet is cut quite thin rather than served as a classic cylinder. I suspect that's because cooking a thick disc correctly is tricky. In this form it's 90 seconds a side. There's also an exceedingly good beef dripping gravy – one that I could quite happily sip neat from a brandy schooner.
Price is interesting. I converted the weights and then compared them to Hawksmoor. Both charge around £12 per 100g for fillet. Hawksmoor is cheaper for sirloin at £7.75 as against £8.22 here, and more expensive for rib-eye at £8.25 as against £7.20. However, at Hawksmoor you only get the steak. At Miller & Carter, the price includes an iceberg wedge, a sauce and fries each. That makes it much cheaper.
Or at least it would, if the extras were all nice. Yes, that gravy is very good. The béarnaise, however, is so loose it looks like something to which a course of antibiotics should be administered immediately. The "onion loaf" is a sponge for the vegetable oil which was clearly never hot enough. And let us never speak again of the halloumi fries. They just can't do deep frying here. The bacon crumb with one of the iceberg wedges is undercooked; it needs to be crisp. And the promising "beef dripping jacket chips" are sad, lumpy halves of undercooked, underpeeled potato. There's a lot of this uneven quality. On a starter sharing platter the macaroni cheese is a model of its kind. The spiced rum BBQ chicken wings are as they're meant to be: a hit of sweet and sticky. Flabby miniature Yorkshires stuffed with pulled beef are an idea that should never have left the test kitchen.
A dessert sharing platter is a bunch of things with the uniformity of confectionary bought in from elsewhere: a mash-soft brownie, a bunch of macarons, a little sorbet. Naturally, it comes on a slate. The wine list includes organic verdejo so is bang up to date. And so, to a verdict: if you live near a Hawksmoor and crave steak, I'd advise you to spend the extra there. But most people don't live near a Hawksmoor. In which case Miller & Carter really is a fair option. Just order damn carefully.
News bites
Keeping with the chain theme, my extra recommendation this week is an obscure outfit called Nando's. OK, not exactly unheard of. But I only recently tried their stir-fried chicken livers and they're a marvel: sweet and meaty with caramel tones, plus a peri peri kick according to taste. If I'd had them at an independent, I'd not think twice about raving. Hence, I'm doing so now (nandos.co.uk).
The homelessness charity Caring in Bristol has joined forces with a group of local chefs for its Caring At Christmas initiative, a pop-up shelter across the festive period for people living on the streets. High quality meals will be provided across seven days by the likes of Romy Gill, Josh Eggleton of The Pony and Trap and Elliott and Tess Lidstone from Box-E (caringinbristol.co.uk).
Congrats to Franklin's in East Dulwich, which celebrates 20 years in business on 29 November. To mark it Tim Sheehan, head chef throughout, will be serving his opening night menu at 1999 prices, including smoked quail and celeriac remoulade at £6.50 and whole plaice for £12.50 (franklinsrestaurant.com).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/nov/24/miller-and-carter-liverpool-the-steaks-are-good-restaurant-review
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