JEREMY Clarkson would still be in a job today had he not come to blows over a late night craving for it.
And only last Christmas, festivities at the Reading Wetherspoons ground to an unexpected halt after a man was knifed in a misunderstanding over it.
People get misty eyed over steak and chips - often red misty eyed.
Is it because drink is sometimes factored into the experience, we wondered, as a virgin wine glass slipped from the hand of a middle aged man, newly seated with his partner at the neighbouring table in CAU. He grinned helplessly as it smashed to the ground.
“Well done,” chided the female.
“You know I like it rare, baby,” we wanted him to bat back, but, instead, he banged his head on the tiny table, sending cutlery clattering, as he disappeared to retrieve the shards. Still, they were happy inebriates and one sensed that, apart from his hand, the only blood leaching tonight would be from the bovine, plated-up sort.
Made popular by Berni Inn, the “Great British Meal” of prawn cocktail, steak, black forest gateau and a bottle of Blue Nun was, by the 1990s, reduced to a Great British Cliche. Meanwhile, other telly shows, about lemongrass, nam pla and taramasalata, made not only our culinary expectations richer, but Jamie Oliver and Sainsbury’s too.
We might play away from home, but when it comes to something for the weekend, behind closed doors, we return to the default position (no, not that one). Our primitive urge for a slab of emasculating flesh remains insatiable.
Now steak and chips is back. So "back" that you would have been forgiven for thinking the second coming of the Lord was imminent when CAU announced its intention to open in Liverpool.
For several months the thundering hooves of the “CAU Boys” (yup, that’s what the waiters are called) were heard until they finally came riding into Castle Street a full month behind schedule.
Never mind that Liverpool has had an Argentinian steakhouse for almost a decade, in the shape of MEET in nearby Brunswick Street, it has not stopped CAU and their affiliate restaurant Gaucho from branding the cattle and the format, as they and others earnestly seek new ways to package the world’s greatest threat to the ozone layer
Swordfish carpaccio
Steak has been reinvented before. Remember when Kobe beef was the thing to get you to part with your hard-earned? Japanese and all the fanciful better for being fed a diet of beer, classical music and massage.
Now the Pampas has replaced the pampered. Argentinian beef in cuts with exotic sounding names. After grazing on the plains of the methane-belching cattle capital of the world, animals are slaughtered, butchered and, according to our enthusiastic waiter, air-freighted 7,000 miles to the Netherlands. From there the cargo goes another several hundred miles by road to where we are now squeezed into an unsullied, white, leatherette banquette. What a killjoy I am. Let them eat steak.
Yet the words “carbon footprint” appear to have been interpreted literally by whoever sent out the charred spatchcock chicken (£11.95), from CAU’s bustling open plan kitchen. Flattened and blackened, a marinade of orange, lemon and garlic and a dollop of purple, sludgy “CAUslaw” could do little to save it from its recent ordeal by hellfire.
Adding a whole new meaning to the term 'carbon footprint'It was at the cheap end of a menu which thinks nothing of asking you to put your faith, and £38.50, into Tira De Ancho, a ribeye, spiral cut, “the king of steaks”. But you do get 600g of it, 21 ounces. That's one long spiral. Not enough? Try a CAU feasting plate for £84.50 in which you get a whopping 1600g (56 ounces) of meat. Enough to feed seven dwarves on the snow white leatherette.
However, a 400g 'Lomito", at a mere £28.50, sounded rather fine (500g £33.50). “The fillet of rump is considered the finest cut in Argentina, combining the flavour of rump and the tenderness of fillet," waxed the blurb.
"Served with a blue cheese sauce," it added. It wasn't. The only thing it did come with was a pulse, however that was not a personal reason to send it back. Otherwise it was remarkable only for its leanness which proved its biggest letdown. Some people will not agree. Lean is better, they say. Those people are wrong.
Steak needs fat, which made the miniscule quantity of excellent chips it came with all the more welcome and to be jealously guarded. I suddenly understood where the knife-wielding Wetherspoon’s bloke was coming from.
LomitoSteak also needs a decent red and this came from a wine list which is divided into “Nice,” “Very Nice” and “Malbecs” depending on your nice or very nice expense account. From the latter came the high voltage Lorca ‘Grafitti (£29.50). An appealing range of soft drinks includes a toothsome “Cau Cooler” (£2.50) of raspberry, apple, passion fruit and grapes.
The supporting acts are worth a punt: a pretty plate of razor-thin swordfish carpaccio (£6.25) and smoked haddock and manchego croquettes (£6.95) among them, not forgetting giant prawns aka Anticuchos skewers (£6.50) “one of South America’s best kept street food secrets”. Whatevs.
Chimichurri, (a piquant dressing of parsley, garlic, red pepper flakes, and oregano) was the thing to lash over a traditional textbook-cooked ribeye, although the 260g seemed like a sliver (£15.95). Allegedly it’s named after its inventor, an Irishman called Jimmy Curry who got lost in Argentina - a wordplay even CAU's menu people couldn’t have forseen.
A pun too far: Pina-CAU-La Da But they do try hard and to the last they are punning away in the puddings. There sits “Pina-CAU-La Da (£5.25)” a dish comprising too many slabs of grilled pineapple which, I suppose, gave them the last laugh. My colleague’s cornflake ice cream sundae went shamefully untouched as his digestive tract considered a 320g sirloin (£20.95) long into the night.
They serve until 11pm here, great news if you’ve just wrapped up location filming, on oooh, I dunno, a TV show about cars.
Ah yes, like the beef, the chastened Clarkson has been hung out to dry in every sense, and a red mist-inducing red is no longer passing his lips.
Still there's some comfort: after a year of controversial headline-making hurrahs, the former Top Gear host knows that a good plate of steak of chips and a big welcome at least awaits him in an Argentinian restaurant. Oh wait, does it FKL.
CAU LIVERPOOL
3–7 Castle Street,
Liverpool
L2 4SW
0151 227 1818 Mon-Sat, 10:00-23:00, Sun 10:00–22:30.
Overall rating:13/20
Food: 7/10 (just)
Service: 3/5
Ambience 3/5
Bill for two £127.50.
Venues are rated against the best
examples of their kind: takeaways
against the best takeaways, fine
dining against the best fine dining, etc.
Following on from this the scores represent:
1-5: Straight into the dog bowl
6-9: Raid the freezer
10-11: In an emergency
12-13: If you happen to be passing
14-15: Worth a trip out
16-17: Very good to exceptional
18-20: As good as it gets
ALL SCORED LIVERPOOL CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL. CRITICS DINE UNANNOUNCED AND PICK UP THEIR OWN BILLS, NEVER THE RESTAURANT OR A PR COMPANY.
