Mouthwatering Steaks at Gillray’s Steakhouse.

Well, I think this is probably the longest I have gone without blogging in my six years of doing this! I’ve had a bit of a crazy month, so this will be a bit of a chatty post as well as a review of a fabulous restaurant located in the heart of London’s Southbank. Gillray’s is a steakhouse situated within the luxury Marriott County Hall hotel, and we enjoyed some of the best steaks I have ever had in London.

As you likely know if you follow me on Instagram, my best friend from Australia has been visiting the past few weeks so all my time has been taken up with showing her around London. It’s been seven years since she was last in the country, and eight years since she was in London, so we did ALL the things! Which meant the blog got a little neglected. But I now have so much to tell you about, so let’s start with this insanely good steak place.

We entered the Marriott County Hall and wandered through the glamorous bar towards Gillray’s, admiring the beautiful view over the Thames and Westminster as we went. It was mid-summer and the light was dipping, but it was still bright outside at 7pm. We settled into the leather booth with a peach bellini each, and perused the menu.

As we would be having such a heavy meal we decided to forgo starters, and just have mains and desserts. However every table gets Yorkshire puddings with melted cheese and gravy each, which made us VERY happy indeed. I really missed Yorkshire puddings while I was in Australia, so every time I have them now I really really appreciate them!

We chose our mains and were then tasked with choosing a steak knife to use with our meal. The waiter was very helpful and explained the difference between each knife and which knives would be best for our particular steaks. To be honest I can’t for the life of me remember which steaks we had now, but we did choose small cuts and I always go for a rump or fillet, so I likely had the 150g fillet or 200g fillet (the smallest rump was 300g and that’s far too big for me). Whatever I had, Caitlin had a different steak, but we both chose them medium rare and both of the steaks were cooked to perfection and mouthwatering.

To accompany our steak and chips we chose the tenderstem broccoli and carrots on the side, and we went a liiiiittle bit crazy with the sauces! I always have Bernaise sauce, but we were enticed and intrigued by the Bacon Jam, so we naturally asked for a pot of it on the side. You guys. It was INSANE. Literally the most incredible sauce I have ever had (if you can even call it a sauce). I was just in steak and meat heaven (sorry vegans and veggies).

After our mains we were pretty full, but like most people we have separate dessert stomachs. Caitlin chose the Cherry Bakewell tart, while I went for the coconut and almond cake. With it came raspberry ripple ice-cream, something I adore but haven’t had since I was a child. Devastatingly it was a very small portion and a bit melted by the time it arrived, but on hearing my disappointment the waiter returned with a huge bowl of non-melted raspberry ripple ice-cream! Naturally I polished the whole thing off as if I hadn’t just eaten a huge dessert, steak, chips, yorkshire pud, and veggies haha. It’s safe to say I left the restaurant VERY full and practically had to waddle back to Waterloo!

We absolutely loved our meal at Gillray’s and I’ll definitely be back whenever I’m near Southbank and in need of a great steak. The food was really truly delicious, and the staff were really lovely, and it was great to see them treating the other diners in the restaurant the same way as we were treated. Not to mention I need that bacon jam back in my life ASAP!