Glitz and glamour at the Mal
It’s not and never will be the cheapest deal in town, because that’s not what Mal is about. It’s about a little glitz and glamour mixed with great drinks and food.
For me, Malmaison is a proper Friday night place. I often pop in for a cocktail or a drink after work and, although it’s rare to be there on any other weekday, I know it can be busy most evenings.
Not having eaten there for some time, I had no idea just how popular the brasserie is.
We ate there on a recent Friday and the place was buzzing – not so busy that our service suffered, but it just had a nice hum about it.
The menu is slightly smaller than I remember, but it was fairly hefty in the past.
Malmaison now concentrates more on what it does well... great steak and the famous Mal burger, without neglecting fish and other mains.
We had a board of mixed olives, crunchy sourdough bread with olive oil, balsamic, French butter and, a different touch, a little pot of humous to whet our appetite.
I had my eye on the Mal classic prawn cocktail (£8.50) to start. I love prawn cocktail and it’s rare to find it on a menu these days, especially one made properly.
It should always be thinly shredded iceberg lettuce which is almost frozen – no posh leaves EVER – a thick almost gloopy cocktail sauce and a generous sprinkle of paprika. The prawns should be small, and a wedge of lemon and some decent brown bread slathered with butter should be on the side.
And, I can happily tell you, the Mal chefs stick to that recipe to the letter.
My companion went for the apple, pear and goat’s cheese salad, which gave more than a nod to the aforementioned fancy leaves with slivers of the fruits layered with frisee and other green bits, walnuts and thin slices from a goat’s cheese log. The raspberry dressing was perfect for this light starter.
We went for steaks next – prime aged Black Angus New York strip steaks as described on the menu.
This, I believe, is a porterhouse, although our server said it was fillet. It tasted more like porterhouse to me, an extremely tender cut of meat from the short loin of the cow.
You can choose from a 250g (£22), 350g (£29) and 450g (£36), which confused me. I know we’re properly metric now, but I thought steaks were the one thing that still came in old money, especially as it’s called a New York strip and in the US it’s always in pounds and ounces.
Anyway, a minor beef if you’ll pardon the pun. Once we’d got our Friday-night brains round the weights (roughly an 8oz, a 12oz and a 16oz, which is a pound) we both ordered a 250g one, mine medium rare and my companion’s medium.
The steaks were perfectly cooked and were served sliced on a wooden board so you could see right away if the chef had got it right.
There was a drizzle of gravy and some watercress and we’d ordered crispy fries, mushrooms with chilli and garlic and, to keep with the US theme, a side of mac and cheese which had a gratifyingly crusty top.
I also had a really good Bearnaise and my fellow diner an au poivre sauce.
It was all really, really lip-smackingingly good.
First published on getreading November 2014
