Disclaimer: If you’re a vegetarian, look away now. Oh wait, crap, I already posted three photos of the meat we had at Goodman Restaurant above, but ok, if you’re vegetarian and you don’t want to know how much of your beloved cow we actually ate, look away now.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
…
We had 5 kilos. Five. Cinco. Fünf. Cinq. And for the yiddish amongst us, finf.
Really, if I had ball sacks I would totally be grabbing them now because if there was ever a time I felt like a man, it would be after ingesting five effin’ kilos of nuthin but cow. Satisfying, liberating, and strangely, makes you want to grunt.
Good friends, Goodman
We descended upon Goodman Restaurant last Friday night ready (and willing) to be meated up, the royal “we” being the regular tweat-up crew plus our ones-es (and a particular crew member with his invisible girlfriend who I swear, if you saw her, you’d totally say she was hotter than Cheryl Cole. Totally).
But first, we had to get through starters. A quick glance at the menu and everyone knew not to order the beef carpaccio. Not that it’s bad or anything but guys, five kilos coming up and given that some of us were at Byron Burger’s Soho launch earlier that day, really, do we need any more beef?
No, not really.
So the starters were highly seafood skewed, ranging from bay shrimp to smoked salmon to crazy-awesome-fresh oysters and a lobster bisque which I didn’t take a photo of because… it’s not the prettiest thing. Interestingly, my plus-one wanted to order the herring, but was advised not to by our waitress because “it’s big. It’s really big. If you want to eat all your meat, don’t order the herring.”
So we didn’t. If anyone does or have ordered it though, wow are we curious! Let us know how enormo the herring was because being a six foot tall Nordic guy, my plus-one, I’m sure he could have handled it. But whatever.
Meat me up, baby.
Through our various and wondrous connections, the manager of Goodman offered to prepare for us a selection of cuts, serve it to us “blind”, meaning they wouldn’t tell us what cut we were eating, and we’d take a stab at guessing afterwards.
Honestly, I knew I was going to suck at this game because I’m the lamest “foodie” of all. I enjoy eating, I love it, I live it. But I don’t really “know” a lot about food. All I know about meat? Fillet mignon and medium rare, but like, more rare. That’s all I know, because that’s what I like. I had zero chance of guessing anything, but hey, the rest of the guys seemed confident, so we gave it a shot.
A whole crew of staff brought out five gigantic plates of meat – one kilo per plate – each piece of meat obviously a different cut, or breed, or from a different region. They were all tagged with various coloured flags so you know, at the end we were meant to say something along the lines of “oh the green flag, that’s got to be USDA” or something like that.
Check out the blood meat on these babies:
Wow, I’m having meat sweats just looking at them.
Oh and you might have noticed there are only four photos. I have no idea what happened to the fifth cut. I was totally mesmerised by the immenseness of protein before me and I cut and sliced and ate and get this, I didn’t even pay attention to the flags. I am a serious failure.
Anyway, the meats were all pretty fantastic. All five kilos were cooked a perfect medium rare, and while some parts (toward the bone) were chewier than others, there were also portions (and globules of delicious fat) which just melted on contact with my mouth.
And the sauce? Go the red wine and stilton. Thou shalt not regret.
As for the game, we all suck. Some of the boys thought they had it sorted and rather confidently told Mr Goodman (he’s not actually Mr Goodman, but for all effects and purposes, the manager of Goodman…) our findings.
He pondered for a moment before a wide grin broke across his face and he looked at us in utter bewilderment thinking “geez, these guys. They call themselves foodies” and said “I’m sorry guys, you got them all wrong”.
PHWOAR. All. Effin’. Wrong.
Confidence levels at an all time low, but hey nothing that some sweet thangs can’t fix.
The desserts at Goodman are pretty standard but y’know I don’t think that ice cream and soufflé are necessarily their core competency here. The New York cheesecake was ok, the ice creams and sorbets were ok and the Goodman’s “ever best” ice cream sundae was certainly not the “best ever” so it’s lucky they didn’t call it that.
Overall, we were full. Satisfied. Grunts all around.
Oh and for those playing at home, the cuts of meat we had were:
- Fillet of Scotch
- T-bone USDA
- Porterhouse USDA
- Scotch rid-eye, grain fed
- Lake District… something or other
Like I said, honestly it means nothing to me. Just give me a nice fat juicy piece of something.
Goodman
26 Maddox Street
London, W1S 1QH
0207 499 3776
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