Iron Steak and Bar
3 January 2020
IRON STEAK AND BAR
114 Bree Street, Cape
Town
So, there we were, the wife and I, lolling around on a
Bree Street pavement on a rather lovely early January night, eating our free
post-prandial ice creams courtesy of Iron Steak and Bar, feeling like a million
Rand, adjusted for inflation, after a splendid steak house dinner with the
goddaughters and their respective significant others. Sometimes, it‘s good to
live in Cape Town.
Not that the petite ice cream cones (vanilla with
chocolate sprinkles) were, when you come right down to it, truly free and
gratis, given that the bill for the six of us came to more than R3000, drinks
included. When the bill is presented, there’s an ice cream token for each diner
that can be redeemed at any time. The younger people opted to save their tokens
for a rainy day; the wife and I have a philosophy, courtesy of Janis Joplin, of
“if you have it today, you wear it today, man.”
This joint must be, shall we say, a “homage“ to the
Flat Iron steakhouses in central London, whose USP is a £10 flat iron steak,
which makes the eateries so popular that the wife and couldn’t get in when we
were in London last April and popped around on a whim. You can’t book, you see. Well, we could’ve
hung around for about an hour for a table if we so wished. We didn’t so wish. I had my doubts about the viability of a
£10 steak, anyhow.
The good news is that one can have a close facsimile
of the same experience in Cape Town (and you can book) for less than £10. For
the flat iron steak, that is. As usual, with sides, sauces and drinks, the meal
ain’t necessarily budget-sized, and the other cuts of steak on offer are more
expensive.
Iron (if I may be so informal) has replaced Charango
and the space looks far more modern, better lit (except at the rear where we
sat) and sleeker than its predecessor, and has probably as many tables outside
on the broad pavement as it has inside, for those wonderful, wind free, warm
summer nights Cape Town experiences so infrequently.
Our table was in a rear corner in a raised section,
with windows on two sides and banquette seating against the walls. It was oddly badly lit there, despite the
various light fittings above us, and was not so much atmospherically and
romantically dim as it was a tad gloomy and challenging for the weak of
eyesight. The benefit of being so far away from the centre of action, though,
was that the clubby music on the PA was a pleasant distraction and not an
intrusion, if one likes listening to essentially the drums and bass of any
song.
The drinks were several rounds of cocktails, one glass
of wine and then a bottle of wine for three of the party. I stuck to my whiskey
sours. The cocktail menu is quite lengthy and intriguing, with old favourites,
and sexy new mixes, and apparently, we missed the two-for-one special offer
that terminated at 19h00, shortly before our arrival.
The menu is a double sided sheet on the table, doing
double duty as place mats too. The extensive choice of steak types and cuts is
on a black board and only the signature flat iron steak features on the printed
menu. As far as I could tell, a crumbed aubergine dish is the sole vegetarian main
course option, and the only other non-meat choice was fish. The chicken meals
were crossed out on the blackboard, or so it seemed to me. I didn’t ask for an
explanation.
There seems to be no vegan option.
Because we were so many, there was a good variety of
starters on the table. The wife chose the wagyu beef dripping fries (actually a
side rather than a starter) (R29),
The three octopus tentacles had a lovely
caramelisation with the prefect balance between crisp and tender. The generous
amount of romescu sauce provided a perky hit of chilli, and rather too much
garlic, as the wife pointedly mentioned later that night. The blistered
tomatoes were okay; I’m not a fan of the roasted tomato.
The wagyu fries were not as good as the description
suggested they would be and was kind of average as fries goes but the tiny portion
of pork cheek I was favoured with, was deeply flavourful and essentially melted
away in my mouth. It may be too rich for some but it’s one more example of why
the pig is my culinary spirit animal.
After the starters there was a general consensus that
most were here for the 200g flat iron steak (R109),
I can eat
steak at home but don’t often have the opportunity for sea bass. My side was
the charred broccolini with sugar snaps and a chilli lime dressing (R45).
The others chose, variously, mash and gravy (R42),
tempura onion rings (R39),
The fish and steaks were also served with a
delightfully fresh green watercress salad.
The flesh of the sea bass, underneath the quite crisp,
well-seasoned skin, was superlatively cooked, flaky, moist and delicious. If I
were to make comparisons, the last time I had such a sublime piece of fish was
the sea bream I ate at Michelin starred restaurant Caelis in Barcelona in late
December 2018, a dish I still dream about. This sea bass was every bit as good.
Should I ever return to Iron, this would again be my choice.
I tasted some of the iron steak, and wasn’t much
impressed. It was juicy, lacked seasoning and was too chewy for my liking.
The mash and gravy were lovely, though the mash was a
tad grainy and, oddly, tasted a lot like potato. The lightly crisp and juicy
onion rings, though, were next level scrumptious and could well be addictive.
My dessert was the citrus doughnuts with vanilla pod
cream and mandarin.
There was also one cheesecake with honeycomb and
blackberry coulis,
It was a good evening with the fam. We had a good
table, the service was excellent, the food quite tasty and the alcohol flowed
just freely enough to perk up the vibe. It seems, tonight at least, that Iron
is popular, with locals and obvious tourists alike, and its position amidst the
other hip joints of Bree Street must be optimal for success if the standards
can be maintained.
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