Marco Pierre White’s Steakhouse Bar and Grill, Birmingham Review

I bought a Groupon deal for Marco Pierre White’s Steakhouse Bar and Grill, BirminghamMarco Pierre White’s Steakhouse Bar and Grill, Birmingham and I’d recommend looking for a deal as they often seem to have them.  It’s a more limited menu, but still a good selection and it proved to be good value.  It’s a great way of getting a bit of a treat without having to spend too much money.  I was booking a table at quite short notice (the day before) so I didn’t want to buy a voucher from Groupon until I’d got my table confirmed, but the restaurant like to have the voucher codes before you arrive.  This meant I had to contact them twice about the booking which I could have done without.  I struggled to get through on the phone the second time and sent an email instead.  Then it turned out that I hadn’t sent both codes (it wasn’t clear), so they didn’t get the second till I arrived.  I did hand over my Groupon voucher on arrival though so they could check before we were served if they wished to.

Marco Pierre White’s Steakhouse Bar and Grill, Birmingham has amazing views over the city, in fact I don’t think there is another restaurant in the whole of the city that can boast views as good as this one.  We were seated one table in from the windows which was slightly disappointing, but we did book late on and the restaurant was quite busy as it was the tail end of Sunday lunch.  You can still see the view reasonably well and we both had views out of the window due to the positioning of the chairs.  I’ve been before and sat right by the window, but found that one of us had our back to the view, so there are some advantages to being sat a little further in.

As we were there on a Sunday we had the Sunday Lunch set menu.  There’s a reasonable amount of choice on this as long as you don’t have dietary requirements or aren’t too hard to please.  There were 4 starters, 5 main courses and 3 desserts to choose from and we had no problem picking out a dish or two in each course.  I had the Crispy Devilled Whitebait With Homemade Tartare Sauce.  Whitebait is a bit of a menu favourite for me and I enjoyed these.  They are simply done, but the homemade tartare sauce complemented them perfectly.

My companion had the Ham Hock Terrine with Sourdough bread and piccalilli .  Again this went down very well, but there wasn’t really enough bread for the terrine. It’s quite a common mistake I find to have the proportions of bread/toast and terrine/pâté wrong and it would have been a nice touch if they’d offered to bring more bread when they served it.

My fellow diner had 28 Day Aged Scottish Roast Striploin Beef with Roast potatoes, seasonal vegetables and Yorkshire pudding served with gravy.  As you’d expect the beef was very flavoursome and tender.  I chose the Classic Chicken Kiev with Pommes frites, roast vine tomato and garden peas.  It did take the humble chicken kiev and elevate it to another level.  Very moist and full of flavour, it’s a dish I’d very happily order again.

For dessert we went for the Brownie and the Ice Cream.  The ice cream was delicious and of good quality and the brownie was delicious too.  Neither of the puddings really stood out as innovative, but they were of a good standard.

We had cocktails included with our meal and they were very refreshing – you can choose from a limited range again.  We had the Mojito and the Daiquiri.  We also ordered drinks – expect to pay over £5 for a bottle of beer. On the bill at the end we were charged for these extra drinks and a 10% service charge which didn’t seem to be voluntary.  As we paid the service charge we didn’t leave a tip on top.