My sister charged me with finding a place for lunch for a visit (with her) to see my father and his partner in London. In theory, I was spoilt for choice bearing in mind what London has to offer. The brief she gave me, however, operated to limit the choice somewhat. Instructions were somewhere not too expensive, with easy access (he is getting on – I mean he is my father and I am, according to J, “like 100“) and make sure he (my father) can’t go mad with the wine list (this was the last and most emphatically emphasised instruction, my sister having been “stung” somewhat in the past on that front). The latter instruction, in particular, narrowed down the list of possible options rather dramatically, with mark ups on wines in London generally horrific (3 x retail or more is not at all unusual from my reading of Andy Hayler’s blog) .

Since I left my last “proper” job, I don’t really do in person meetings any more and as such have little (work) reason to go up to London these days (my last in person business meeting was over 2 years ago). As a result, I am somewhat out of the loop as to what’s good up there.

A bit of research found a number of good lunch time offers (the Devonshire in Soho was an early front runner as was Bouchon Racine in Clerkenwell), but most came with wine lists of questionable quality at the appropriate price point (since when was £30/£40 + the entry bottle price on wine lists?!) based on pretty unconscionable mark ups.

After much humming and harring, I (having said it needed to be a Monday or Friday) recalled that London steakhouse stalwart Hawksmoor did a pretty decent (value and quality) set lunch offer and, more importantly, a corkage offer on Mondays of £5 for any bottle.  This is regardless of format, so you could bring a melchizedek and be charged a mere fiver corkage. You would, of course, have to find one and carry it to the restaurant, which is no mean feat when it is 30 litres (40 standard bottles).

One thing I am not short of is bottles of wine (well over 400 bottles in the wine room these days, the cost of which I sort of regard as sunk costs as I don’t tend to on sell) and the set lunch and £5 corkage offer rather ballseyed my sister’s brief.

I have always like the understated, yet grandiose, style of every Hawksmoor I have been to and the Air Street branch is no exception.

As always, a somewhat unobstrusive exterior entrance gives way to a plush dining area.

I love art deco and this place screams it to me.

After an uneventful journey up, despite the unbelievably uncomfortable seats on GWR trains (designed as far as I can see by Tomás de Torquemada inspired sadists who revile in the pain these torture chairs inflict on others), with me relieving the ensuring aches and pains by walking the 50 odd mins to my destination rather than taking the tube, led me to a first stop at the Cork and Bottle in Leicester Square to kill a bit of time (being tight I booked the cheapest train tickets – did contemplate the coach up, but the estimated, traffic dependent, trip duration of 202 light years stopping off at Proxima Centuri b and TOI – 700e after Bristol and before Reading,  put me off somewhat). My sister took the bus up from Somerset and was 40 + mins. late due to congestion on the M3.

I always use to enjoy a “pre the train back” tipple at the Cork and Bottle near Paddington station (long since closed and now a, probably short lived, craft beer pub) and this place follows a good (to my mind) formula of a decent range of wines per glass as well as offering a carafe size (why don’t more place do 500ml carafes). Empty when I got there mid day on a bank holiday, which is a worrying sign (especially as all the seeming shxte places that abound around and in Leicester Square were busy).

As I perused the by the glass list,

I noticed a bit of an oddity. 

A 100ml glass of Tio Pepe fino was price at £7.25, whilst the Leanor Palo Cortado was £6.95  So what you may say (I can just imagine J rolling her eyes at this point), but the Fino retails at £11 ish  and the Palo Cortado retail at around the £18.50 mark. So it is weird that the latter is cheaper! Extrapolate that up to the per bottle price and you get to £52 for the Palo (under a 3 x mark up) and £54 ish for the Fino (an outrageous, even by London standards,  nigh on 5 x mark up).

Despite my love of sherry, I actually went Greek with 175ml glass of the Avantis Historica (an assytriko – viogner blend) at £10.25 for a 175 ml pour (as against a retail price of £16.50, so under a 3 x mark up, which is not bad by London standards).

Quite pleasant, but not sure what the viogner brought to the party. I love the crisp, refreshing, minerality of assytriko and the apricoty ripeness of the viogner rather tempered that trait here

Back to Hawksmoor, the set lunch menu offers a short, but reasonable, choice of starters, mains and puds

for a very reasonable £29 for 2 course and £33 for all three.

With the £5 corkage, I bought two bottles (both red) which were 20 years apart, with rather different wine making styles (one an Italian appassimento style, the other a french oaked rioja).

and my father bought a rather fine white Burgundy

Before I get to the food, a word about the wine and corkage as against buying off a restaurant list.

Retail the white Burgundy is about £80, the Graticciana 2018 about £40 and the Remírez de Ganuza 1998 about £70 (if you can find it). This comes to a total of £180 to buy these wines retail now.  Add the £15 corkage (+ 12.5% service charge on that) and you get to just under £200 all in (in reality nearer £120, I got a case of the Remirez very cheap at auction, on actual purchase price of the wines when bought).

Now let’s apply a far from unusual (actually quite low) restaurant mark up of 2.5 x retail (seen a lot higher in the UK) and that gets you to £450. Add the standard service charge of 12.5% (automatically applied in most places these days) and that takes it up a further £56 +, which pushes the total over £500. So the saving is over £300 for our table of 4 as against a purchase of comparatively priced (retail) wines off a restaurant list (even if we paid the current retail price for those wines, which we didn’t). Regardless, we saved a bucket load of cash by taking advantage of this excellent corkage offer.

More on the bargain booze later, but first to the food, with each of us going of the lunch menu.

rather than the al a carte.

I did have to steer my father away from the porterhouse,

pointing out to him that the smallest one on the board was 1.3kg (in my head doing the calculation based on a price of £12.50 per 100g I was 😱 as my siater and I were paying). Luckily he saw sense, with the server, helpfully, pointing out it was a good size for 4 to share and me saying didnt you say you don’t have as much of an appetite these days.

For starter, I have had the potted beef and yorkie before and whilst it has always been very good on past visits. With a white wine in the mix, however,I thought the smoked mackerel dish would be good to try.

Mackerel is a fabulous fish which has such an affinity with smoke and here it came with a new potato salad, a tad unnecessary laylandia-esque mass of greenery and some grated parmesan.

Decent portion and I enjoyed the mackerel which had a sweet, rich, smokiness to it (without the smoke being too dominant). Too much of the unnecessary greenery was the most glaring flaw in this dish, with a couple of slightly undercooked pots also detracted from the quality mackerel. The dish would also have benefited from a touch more generosity in terms of the parmesan.

Nice flavours, but just a couple of irksome issues on the execution front.

Others had the potted beef and yorkie (only with beef, ever J)

Big old portion for a lunch fixed price menu and it went down very well with those who ordered it. I would say unless you are a pig then this is ideal to share, with my sister and father doing precisely that. My only (observed rather than tasted) qualm was the seeming gloopiness of the stuff in the gravy boat (didn’t seem to be an issue for those who ate it mind).

On to the main and we all ordered the rump steak and chips combo (why any one would pay the £7 supplement to “upgrade” to the “dull as ditch water” fillet tail is beyond me).

Decent size to the rump, although each was a rather irregular cut

I requested mine medium rare, with the emphasis on rare, and I would day it was a little over for my tastes (I did seem to get a rather stragglely bit – below – compared to my sister – above – and others, which probably didn’t aid an even cook).

Notwithstanding the slight overcook, this was a well flavoured bit of meat (I much prefer grass fed to grain feed).

Chips were good with a crisp exterior, lots of gnarly bits, and a fluffy interior. The garnish was nicely dressed, but ultimately superfluous to requirements as we ordered a couple of sides including a Caesar salad.

As one of our party ordered just the one course lunch offering

which provides for a more expansive side options (and a rather nice gentlemens, anchovy, relish butter). She chose beef dripping chips as her side

and I would say these were superior to the  ones (I had) on my plate. Bit more gnarly, with a distinct beef tallow tang to them.

We also added a ceasar salad (no pic – £6.00), quite nice but bit mean portion wise and seemingly no croutons (well I couldn’t see any), and a mac and cheese (£7).

The latter had a decent gratinated topping and a pleasing cheesey hit to the interior. Good M n’ C this, hitting the sweet consistency spot of not too loose but not claggy.

I was too stuffed for pudding as were the rest of us, bar from my father.  He had an ice-cream (no idea if it was good or not, but assume so as he ate it all).

We had coffees in the form of 1 espresso and 2 double espressos, which were a bit weak for my tastes and came to more (£17.50) than the corkage!!

Back to the wine,

the Meursault was rather fine with a lovely oaky butteriness, vanilla, as well as saline notes and orchard fruit. Nice lemoney acidity to it to, that made it very refreshing.

The Graticciana was a bruiser of a wine,

with the appassimento process super charging the fruit.  Big hit of sweet plum and kirshy black cherry followed by tobacco and dark chocolate. Drinking very nicely now, this has plenty left in the tank. Worked very well with the steak.

The Remírez de Ganuza 1998

was an all together more subtle beast.  Much less bold fruit and more teritary  notes with a distinct aroma of baked orange, as well as leather and  cigar box. Nice level of acidity in contrast to the rich opulence of  the Graticciana. One to drink up now if you have it, as I don’t think it will improve with further aging and it is probably close to the beginning of an inevitable downward spiral.

The verdict

The corkage offer at Hawksmoor on Mondays is a stellar deal. It allows you to fill your boots wine wise without the draining of the bank account that tends to follow buying decent wines off wine lists in restaurants.

Looking at the Hawskmoor list, I would say comparable-ish wines (retail price wise, at least) would be:

• C.V.N.E, Imperial Rioja Gran Reserva 2012 –  £140.00
• Corteforte, Amarone della Valpolicella – £109
• Remelluri, Blanco 2020 – £192

So we would have spent at least £441 (+ 12.5% service charge of £55)

We paid £180 all in, 

of which the booze was £16.88 (inc. service charge apportioned to it).

As the wines brought were sunk cost, it could be argued that we saved ourselves about £480. Even if you factor in buying them retail on the day we would have saved nigh on £300!!! That is some bargain as it makes the trip up, on the mobile torture chamber (albeit a quick one), and the meal effectively free.

The food here is well matched to fine wines. Don’t need to get too fancy pants with food when drinking good wine (awful waste if the wine clashes with the food, which can be the case with ” innovative” flavour combos ). The simplicity of the express lunch menu (and wider al a carte) here is just the ticket and the fact they do the corkage offer every Monday including Bank Holidays is a real boon.

Asador 44 use to do a similar deal on Mondays pre the Covid catastrophe, and I would dearly love them to bring it back. Good way to get people in on a Monday and great for those hospitality workers who often have Mondays off and nowhere decent to go.

Gaucho do do a free corkage offer on Mondays, but the food is not up to much in my opinion and I have heard tell they limit it to one bottle per table. Outrageous, and makes the whole thing rather pointless, if that is true.

As an aside, whilst I love eating out, I do not generally love the experience of drinking wine out in a lot of  UK restaurants. More often than not, restaurant wine lists in the UK are generic, boring and overpriced in my view. If that doesn’t change people may well simply stop buying wine when out. Charging a 3.5 x plus margin on wine (often mediorce stuff) may have the potential to look good on the balance sheet, but 3.5 x 0 not so much.

When I go to Spain I tend to spend more on wine with a meal as quality wines are fairly priced. I wouldn’t dream of buying the Remelluri Blanco (a very, very good wine) on the list at Hawksmoor as it is £192 (I really like it, but not that much). On a June trip to Spain at a good restaurant in Donostia-San Sebastian it was €90 (£75), so I could have bought two and still had £42 change (£37 if bought the second to Hawksmoor on a Monday) over the list price here!

Times are hard for restaurant, but so to for cash strapped punters (with our “wise and generous” Lords and Masters indicating things are going to get a fair bit “don’t put the heating on” worse before, if ever, they get better). A bottle of wine is probably one of the easiest things for people to give up on when eating out and if enough people stop drinking wine out, I suspect, that would be the final nail in the coffin for many restaurants. I am told that may restaurants rely on the profits made from wine, but beware the killing of the golden goose.

Corkage offers like this one at Hawksmoor may not make restaurant much money in themselves, but it gets people through the door on a traditionally slow day and those people are likely to come back and not just on a Monday.

The details

Address: 5a Air Street, London W1J 0AD

Website: https://thehawksmoor.com/

£5 Corkage offer is every Monday. Corkage on other days is a still a reasonable £25. Click here for full details

Plenty of wine shops near to Hawksmoor to pick up wine to take on a Monday  including  Amathus, Antidote, Cork and Bottle (they do take out as well as drink in) and Berry Bros. and Rudd).