Hippopotamus Steakhouse — Restaurant in Lille

A group of 12 of us descended upon this place early evening on Wednesday 8th May. They checked they could accommodate us and initially seated us at two 6 seater tables towards the back but as soon as a 12 seater became available they moved us. The orders were taken, complimentary crisps provided and we settled in. Our drinks arrived promptly and the food arrived, pretty much all at the same time about 10 minutes later. I went for the Steakhouse Burger in a black bread bun as the picture shows. They cobbled up a vegan burger for a friend and another had a burger in a brioche bun. One person had the fish. The rest went for various steaks. My burger was very nice, essentially a cheese and bacon burger. The other burgersxand fish went down well.

Pretty quickly on it became clear that the steaks, especially the sirloins, were well below expectation and were put to the side. This was brought to the attention of the staff and fair play to them they reduced the bill significantly.

Overall, this is a high volume, medium priced, through trade, steak restaurant right in the tourist centre of Lille where the Eurostar from Brussels and London stops  so it will get a lot of tourist trade. Accordingly it's not a top end, limited customer, steak speciality, restaurant and you should adjust your expectations accordingly. That said the steaks were below the standard expected of an equivalent Aberdeen Steak House you would find in London's West End at a similar price point.

Beyond that the staff were very busy but looked after us...

My wife and I arrived at Hippo at 8:45 pm. We were seated immediately and placed our order by 9:00 pm. We then waited more than 20 minutes for our appetizer that finally arrived after we asked about it. We ate our appetizer and had our drinks which were subpar. While we were eating our appetizers they seated a table of four next to us that also went ahead and ordered immediately. We then waited, 15, 20 and then 30 minutes and nothing. Meanwhile, the table next to us got served their entire meal, appetizers, bottles and steaks. We waited. Finally at about 9:45 we asked about our meal. Our waiter said he would go look and then didn’t return. At around 10:00 pm we gave up and walked inside to find out waiter. We told him wanted to to pay for what we ate and leave as we have now been waiting for over an hour. He went to get the manager who then ran up and came back down followed by the our food. We were no longer interested in sitting down and eating at that point. They apologized, charged us for what we ate and sent us on our way. I would not recommend going here mainly for the the wait, but also due to the food that we did have was not all the great. Overall, service, food and atmosphere were well below expectations for...

We both fancied a steak and steak is their thing so we were hopeful. Sadly disappointed, though.

The waitress plopped a pot of crisps on the table while we waited. A bit slow to come back to take a drinks order, especially considering it was very quiet.

My partner went for a steak on the bone, I wasn't feeling over hungry so plumped for the steak club Entrecôte. They were out of the standard size so I had the XL. Both of us like our meat cooked blue.

The food came quickly, steak, fritte and a pepper sauce. Nothing green in sight.

They don't know how to cook steak here. The outside should be almost crisp. It was at least warm inside and not overdone. The meat was rather average, or at least mine was. My partner's more expensive steak was very tough and sinewy and had no flavour at all. She sent it back and asked for the same as me. It took longer to arrive than the first time and was again not overly well cooked and more bland than mine. Much more inedible fat and gristle than mine, maybe 1/3rd of the steak.

I expected much more from a specialist steak house. It wasn't awful but nor was it great. ...