Since 1968, Angus Steakhouse has been part of London’s cultural capital. In the early days it was listed in The Good Food Guide and today its dated aesthetic is immediately recognisable to many if not all. The chain had a wobble in the early Noughties and branches closed — there are now five when there were once almost 20 — but the business has endured and so it has staying power to its credit. It is about as old as Le Gavroche, another institution, though one that is sadly soon to call time.
The comedian David Mitchell once went so far as to suggest Angus Steakhouses might be granted World Heritage status. “These restaurants… are all that we have left of a proud heritage of serving shoe leather with béarnaise sauce to neon-addled out-of-towners,” he wrote. The brand has long been a point of fascination and ridicule. In 2010, the food critic Jay Rayner gave one of its restaurants a less than favourable review, finding only middling steak and regretful accompaniments; a piece in The Independent a decade ago compared the meat simply to “decay.”
