Restaurants | 29 April 2006

After writing about how difficult it is to find a truly great steak in London, my friend Robbo calls to suggest the Guinea Grill in Mayfair, if it is still there. He says he first went to the Guinea in the 1960s, for a celebratory dinner funded by richer, more sophisticated London relatives — he is from somewhere called, I believe, ‘Leeds’; have you heard of it? — and was astounded: ‘I’d never seen anything like it. On the way in there was this crushed ice display with strawberries on it, and the strawberries were huge, the size of avocados. And the avocados? — the size of melons! And the steaks were fantastic. I’ve never, ever forgotten it.’ Amazingly, the Guinea, which was established in 1952 and meant so much to this boy from ‘Leeds’ — nope, still can’t place it — is not only still there and appears to be still thriving, but has since developed a prize-winning reputation for its pies: three times National Steak and Kidney Pie champion of Great Britain (1991, 1994, 1997) as well as winner of Steak Pie of the Century (2000), which is a curious thing. Which century? And how would you know?

Anyway, it is on Bruton Place, a lovely street otherwise occupied by those fine art galleries where the floors squeak so you can never slip in or out unnoticed, or so I imagine, as I’ve never quite found the courage to go into one. (I shouldn’t add, but will anyway, that when the Athena chain died I not only stopped buying art altogether, but a little something in me died.) The Guinea is actually a Young’s pub with a dining-room at the back — so I suppose this makes it one of the first gastropubs. The small, authentic bar is crowded, mostly with blokes: younger blokes in smart suits — it’s apparently popular with local property developers — as well as older gentlemen of the kind who carry proper, big umbrellas and, probably, big, proper handkerchiefs.