Sagardi — Restaurant in London

I LOVE steak, check out my other reviews for places I rate. Unfortunately, I think Sagardi is not in a good spot right now and not entirely due to its own fault. Brexit has made the cost and timeliness of imports way higher and longer than it needs to be so the food price will go up and the freshness will go down. It's one reason I prefer locally sourced cattle to make steaks. Perhaps this is not a bad thing, but it limits our range of experiences.

Normally I'd give this restaurant four stars, but the price due to potentially the aforementioned reasons was astronomical (see later) which has reduced it to three stars. I also want to apologise for not photographing all the food. With that, let's get to it.

Visited a couple of weeks ago on a recommendation from a friend. I love Spain and I was really excited to sample dishes from the Basque region, which this region purports to extol from.

Upon entering the restaurant, it has a lovely feel. It's decked out in what looks like a small restaurant that may be off the beaten path. Service was satisfactory. A couple of the recommendations just weren't any good and I felt like they were recommended to move product (see later).

We had:

Starters

Iberian Ham croquettes: silky smooth. Absolutely incredible, I don't know how they got these so right.

Creamy Mushroom Croquettes: ditto, but with mushrooms.

Traditional grilled txistorra: Basque version of black pudding. Sublime.

So you can see all the starters were incredible. We couldn't wait for the main course.

Main course

Premium Matured Beef Steak (100g): Basque steak from a cow that was between 10 and 20 years old, aged for 90 days (IIRC). 1.6kg, of which 20-30% of the weight is the bone: this was just ok. No flavour sensation. They also made the mistake of cutting the steak into thin slices so it got cold very quickly. This is not what you do with a large steak. We would have preferred to cut it ourselves when ready. It was cooked perfectly, so I'm not sure what else they could have done to make it better. It just didn't taste anywhere near as good as steak houses that charge a third as much (see my other reviews). The knives provided also weren't sharp enough to easily remove meat still on the bone. This steak was about £215 when the final bill came. This was a waiter recommendation (of course, the size was our choice, although there wasn't much choice given the weight of the bone).

Lettuce from The Hernani Gardens with Spring Onions: a simple side dish, tasted clean. Perfectly suited for our main.

Roasted and hand-peeled fresh red "piquillo" peppers: another nice accompaniment.

Dessert

Selection of Artisan Basque Cheeses (For 2 People): good selection. For £16 the portions were pretty small, especially considering it was supposed to be for two people.

Basque Almond Cake: Extremely dry, which potentially is why there is a lemon type sauce served with it. Unfortunately, the sauce was so tart I couldn't eat it, which meant eating a dry cake. This was also a waiter recommendation.

Drinks

Two bottles of sparking water.

Total bill £350 all in for two people. Overall, I'd go again but not for the steak, and only if the prices were more reasonable. As it stands, one to clock up...

Overpriced, small portions, average flavour and bad attitude, the only positive was the decor. A group of 11 of us went to dinner for a birthday celebration, we spent a lot of money and it was disappointing. The food was very overpriced for the quality and quantity, for example we had 4 or 5 bitesized slices of steak each for about £42pp and each slice was one third fat - I've had better quality and a larger amount for less money at multiple other places in London so I definitely wouldn't recommend going here for steak. The steak pictured below was split between 5 people and cost us around £210 altogether as that was the size that was recommended to us to have alongside a portion of ribs each - most of it is fat and there were maybe 4 good pieces that aren't tiny and don't have any fat at all in the top right. The top left quarter of the photo was pretty much 100% fat and inedible. They didn't explain the steak very well because if I knew it'd be 30% fat I wouldn't have got it.

The ribs tasted OK but the portion was very small. The oysters were great but you can't really go wrong with them. We couldn't get anyone's attention for over ten minutes despite the restaurant being half empty, the waiters forgot multiple dishes (a starter and two sides) and when asked it took another fifteen minutes to bring out by that point we had finished our food. A group of us got steak and we wanted it cooked different and they said they could bring it out medium rare and then cook some pieces more but when they brought it over they disappeared and we had to look around for someone to cook some of the pieces to medium which took a while even though they knew that's what we wanted to do.

When one of us asked if they had any sauce for the wedges they gave us a dirty look and said they didn't have any sauce. When we asked if they do a birthday treat for our friend they condescendingly said "oh so you're not getting desserts?". They constantly spoke to us as if we couldn't afford to eat there. They had a bad attitude at almost every point during our meal and when calculating the bill they didn't add our payments up properly saying we had £300 extra to pay when we didn't and they didn't take off the deposit at the end of the meal which we had to push for. It's safe to say we refused to pay service charge which they didn't even question, they must get that a lot, although we always round up our amounts to pay so accidentally...

Had the tasting menu. First course was a delicious basque sausage. We were given about 1 inch each. I thought it was an amuse bouche. Was staggered to realise this was what constituted a "course." A pallid and bland omelette. Like a greasy puddle on a small plate. Streaming with oil. Lacking flavour. I cannot imagine that this dish is a thing anywhere in France or Spain including the Basque-lands. How the Hell can you produce and serve a ghastly omelette like that. A thing of shame! It was about this time we realised that our server knew nothing about the menu. And was not interested anyway. We asked for wine selections with the courses. It took quite a while to communicate to the server that we wanted someone who knew the wines to make suggestions for us. We wanted to try Basque wines we had never heard of. I cant remember what they were but they were the hoyse wines from Basque cellers and the low end of the high prices on their menu and good. Third course was pan fried cod. Tiny portions. Unspectacular. Boring. Bland. So by this time I realised this was a rip off. Could have fitted the portion in a side plate of a dolls tea-service. 4th course was a tomahawk steak. Supposed to weigh 550g per person. I know steak. And how to cook it. I rarely bother with it unless i personally sourced it and cooked it. This was top quality meat. Salted well. Cooked as best could be expected seeing it was not allowed to come to room temp before being fired. No sides were offered and these had to be purchased as extras. All were boring and below the standard I would serve at a sleepover for 8 year olds. Finally the 5th course. 1 type of cheese on a cheese plate. We were expecting some cheeses from basque land. I have had better from lidl during spanish week. We were still hungry. We decided not to waste any more money on basque cheesecake cus everything else was underwhelming rip off. 3 people. 9 glasses of wine. 3 sides. Tasting menu. Cost £400. Total rip off. Disgrace to Basque...