REVIEWS
TOP TABLE REVIEWS
" Midday on the freezing second Saturday in January..... but unlike the weather we were greeted warmly. We had the place to ourselves for an hour allowing the kids to roam which the staff were kind enough to tolerate. Food was good - hearty options with all opting for choices from the set menu which represented great value."
" A great find - delicious food where you wouldn't really expect to find it! Great service as well. We ate in the restaurant but I'll be keen to check out the bar as well."
" An excellent bar and brasserie style restaurant with a good atmosphere and a great addition to Wandsworth. A good small menu - vegetarian choice unusual and excellent and good meat and fish too. Service friendly and excellent. Definitely will revisit."
" Our meal at the Steam Bar & Restaurant in Wandsworth was very pleasurable. Great sized portions along with a good selection of wines. Service was good and not overly attentative to the point of being annoying! We would definitely go again."
" Warmest welcome in Wandsworth. Bar friendly and accomodating, waitress knew her stuff and was spot on with recommendations for food and wine. Chef and his team delivered the goods, all in a very successful evening."
" Steam Bar and Restaurant, Wandsworth has a contemporary, fresh and vibrant feel. The restaurant was full with a lively atmosphere. The staff are friendly and professional; food was extremely good value; full of flavour and generous portions. I'll definately be returning."
" Great service and wonderful food. The venison and mushroom pie was cooked to perfection and there was a nice amount of spinach to accompany - often unusual to have a good quantity of vegetables at a restaurant. The bottle of Lalande-de-Pomerol we had was lovely too, and the waiter even offered to decant it for us, which improved it even more! The only slight negative was the noisy table next to us, as my husband and I were hoping to have a romantic evening."
" Went to Steam Bar for Sunday lunch - good choice of beef, chicken or pork plus other mains. Food was excellent - especially the sticky toffee pudding... easily enough to share between two. Good value too - 1/4 roast chicken was only £8 and more than enough for my husband. Will definitely be going again soon."
" Loved the menu - found it hard to choose. The food was hot, well cooked and plentiful. The staff were attentive, but not too much and our waitress knew the menu well and could answer all our questions. The scallops were perfectly cooked and hot, the meat tender and tasty. Good value for money given the portions and quality. I've already recommended it, and planning to go again very soon."
" Fantastic food and service. Steak was melt-in-the-mouth and Sticky Toffee Pudding was spot on. Great to see a restaurant of this quality in Wandsworth."
Love this place! Great food, Great staff and great atmosphere! Always delivers and Sat night family get together was the perfect excuse to come here again! Fab!!
A sandwich board in the street advertises the evening’s sports fixtures; the plasma screen TV in the bar holds several goggle-eyed men, lagers in hand, transfixed.
Don’t let first impressions deter you. Walk straight past this spectacle into the rear dining room, which has changed little since the days when it was bar-brasserie Ditto. It’s worth it, because the cooking here is currently the best in Wandsworth Town.
A starter of scallops with slices of black pudding is a classic pairing, flavour-packed when served on a bed of diced bacon and peas.
Crubeens, an Irish dish, is something that can be dreadful if done badly, but here they’re exemplary little pucks of deep-fried, shredded salted pork. The crisp outer concealed the gelatinous bite of the flesh from pig’s trotters inside.
These were served with the perfect accompaniment of a sauce gribiche. This relish resembles an egg mayonnaise but the addition of chopped capers gives it the sharpness to cut through the slightly rubbery texture of the crubeens; a garnish of bitter watercress pulls the dish together masterfully.
It’s clear that the chef knows how to handle meat, yet equal talent was displayed with our vegetarian main course (one of two choices).
The ‘parmesan pancake’ was actually more like a soufflé, delicate in texture but imbued with deep flavours from the aged cheese and sautéed wild mushrooms, topped with some wild rocket.
Another winner was a fillet of hake, served on a very appetising bed of baby artichokes, cherry tomatoes and a herby olive oil dressing.
Where Steam does comes unstuck is by describing itself primarily as a ‘wine bar’. Even though it hosts occasional wine dinners, the selection of wines is nothing special, and the list is badly annotated with pointless headings such as ‘exotic and other’.
Steam’s a brasserie with excellent cooking – and
a sports screen in the bar. If you live locally, you should cherish it.
Time Out London Issue 2041: October 1-7 2009
There are a couple of things everyone should have local to them, a good curry house and a relaxed bar/restaurant. Until recently Wandsworth residents had The Chutney to satisfy the former, but since the demise of Dittos Bar & Restaurant nothing has come along to replace the latter. There are a couple of restaurants around, who have had a difficult history in the past, such as the Roundhouse around the corner, and both on paper should have done very well, what with the affluent local residents and a lack of competition, but they never really shone and relied on the bars to survive. Coupled with the lack of parking around Dittos it wasn’t too surprising to see the closed notices. Bizarrely the tables remained set and gathering dust for months after its demise until a note in the window proclaimed the imminent arrival of Steam, from Michael Fairbanks and Stephen Chenery, owners of Steam Wine Bar in the city.
First impressions were very good, they have moved the dining area to the back of the space and put in a lounge for drinking in the front, all of which creates a good atmosphere in the room and prevents the restaurant looking a little empty on quiet days.
Decent quality bread was brought to the table without prompting and although I don’t drink the stuff, preferring mine from Monsieur Evian, tap water was brought without the customary raised eyebrow.
A nicely designed menu had a decent choice to satisfy my whole group, nothing particularly innovative about it but I always find that challenging the diners is best suited to the Hibiscus’s of this world, while local restaurants should concentrate on well cooked and, dare I say it, seasonal dishes. Grilled scallops, black pudding with peas bacon and mint was to start. This could have turned out very badly, I had lunched at Sake Bar and Emporium that day, which is in my opinion the best Japanese restaurant in London, and had easily the best Scallop Sashimi I have ever tasted, so comparisons were going to be tough. However it came through very well, scallops were accurately cooked, a nice searing on the outside without being rubbery as is so easy to do, the black pudding worked nicely and what dish is not improved by bacon? The crubbeens, pigs trotter meat, rolled in breadcrumbs and fried, although very good didn’t quite reach the heights of the scallops.
Main courses were brought and were pretty much what was expected, apart from their size, these were very generous portions. Slow cooked shoulder of lamb, mustard and parsley crust fell off the fork quite happily, the promise of a bit of my companions Lemon Sole, Capers & Black Butter never materalised due to him finishing it before I had a chance to claim my portion, so I presume it must have been good.
Dessert of Crème Brule and shortbread was slightly too much sugar and not enough crème, and the biscuit wasn’t crisp enough, suggesting it had lain around a bit, but it was a minor point in the evening.
A bottle of Agustinos Pinot Noir 2008 at £20.50 seemed to please the whole table and was quite reasonably priced we felt. Service was very polite and good, even when my mother enquired what part of Australia the Kiwi waitress was from. All in all the restaurant deserves to succeed, they do what they do very well with confident, good quality cooking at a price that is very reasonable. One can just hope that the residents of Wandsworth come and support it in numbers.
Wedding Reception
David and I arranged a lunch at The Steam Wine Bar and Restaurant on a Saturday mid-afternoon for our friends at following our Civil Partnership ceremony at Wandsworth Town Hall, as it was just a short walk away and some parking could be found in the streets nearby.
After discussing our timings and the number of guests with Enda, we chose the Private Room for our lunch. Enda and Crispin were extremely helpful in compiling an interesting and varied menu that suited a wide range of tastes. They made the process simple and without pressure and there was nothing that was a problem for them.
The Private Room provided a relaxed and intimate atmosphere for our lunch with our friends and we could not have wished for a more enjoyable afternoon. We were completely unaware that at the same time there were other customers in the bar and restaurant. Food, service and drinks were excellent and could not be faulted.
