Well done Hawksmoor Manchester

Apparently the diners ordered a £260.00 bottle so I am assuming some knowledge of wine perhaps. The laughable thing with wine at this level I bet they couldn't tell the difference.

Its a brasserie restaurant chain Wellers. Shrug 

The quality and price point is totally different to Cote. Cote must have 100+ restaurants nationwide, Hawksmoor has what? 4 or 5 in London and one in Manchester.

Not comparable at all.

 

tbh (having looked at their menu now) if I wanted to spend that much money on that kind of food, I would just go to Rules. A chain like that seems pointless. 

 

Whatevs good on them for making positive social media out of it 

Wellers, I like Cote a lot as it happens, and yes they do have now about 85 or so restaurants but are rumoured to be closing at least half of them as profits have tumbled. Over expansion /greed and all that.

Hawksmoor now have about 11 , half having been opened in the last two years. They are nonethe less basically doing the same stuff albeit at often different price points.

I am never sure when groups like this move from being independentlyowned/ran to becoming a chain. I mean who would have thoughtthe Ivy would have frown to 20 or so outlets

Wellers, you don't think that Graphite Capital are going to be too concerned with sourcing the best fresh ingredients, cooked in the best kitchens with the best chefs do you. That is not how they are going to make a decent return.

They will roll out as many as they can, using inferior ingredients, chefs, sites, and kitchens, and still attempting to charge michelin level of prices. That will  be sustainable short term until people say Fvck that I may as well go to a one star restaurant that charges less .

Interestingly, when Hawksmoor were bough they said they may open another site but no more and retain the "quality" . Interestingly as I have said they have opend 5 or more in quick order, with more planned. Where there is volume there is profit as the saying goes.

I don't mind a steak at Miller & Carter, they tend to be ok but normally I cook my own as well.  Not just the cost but I get exactly what I want.  Albeit without the lobster tail usually...!

 

@ 3??? do you reckon a rib eye at £33.00 at Hawksmoor is 4 times better than a rib eye at Cote costing say £8.00.Equally is a £4000 bottle of wine tastier by a multiple of twenty than one that cost £200.00

I am ad idem with the hoolmeister on this.  i never order steak in a resto cos they fck it up.  "Argentine" places are the worst for this.

I'll have mine from the local butchers and cook it how I like it, tx.

at to q-mark, you put me in mind of a dinner party i went to hosted by a m7 who's other half was a master of wine.  she poured a blind tasting of white for us all so he could showcase his "skillz".  "It is not an australian chardonnay, I'm getting hints of gooseberry and burned rubber" I said jokingly.  

"I think you're wrong wang" said the master "it is definitely new world chardonnay and i think that it's less burned rubber more smoked kippers and tangerine...  I am going to say a 2007 from [vineyard I forget the name of] in NSW"

"errr why do you rule out the old world" asked our host, clearly conscious that her showing off of new boyf was backfiring

"oh it's very clear when you have a sophisticated palette" he replied.

it was of course a french sauvignon...

 

Heh! Serves them right.

I get my steaks from Donald Russel.  Not the absolute cheapest but I’d say easily mega-cheaper than a restaurant and v v good cuts.  Top end stuff. 

Wang I don't doubt a £ 10.00 bottle of red is not as " nice" as say a £30.00 one, but when you start going out and dropping £300. on a red is it actually 10 times nicer? probably not.

There have been no end of programs on TV about wine experts who claim in a blind tasting, they can tell, the year, the grower, etc, etc. It is all complete pompous bollocks, so your anectode is about right.

I am surprised the restaurant mark ups are that "little" I assumed it was nearer 300/400 percent mark up. A local independent restaurant I eat at fairly often charges £35.00 for a Chablis , that costs £11.00 in Sainsburys

Those premium non vintage wines are just focusing on rarity.  Nothing to do with quality in most cases.  You can get some of the very best 60s and 70s vintage wines for under a grand.  Restaurants don’t risk it because of the dangers of corking.

"For some palates I suppose so, yes, but by the standards of anyone who knows anything at all about either, no, don't be silly."

heh what is there to *know* about steak other than whether you like it 

The Comtesse de Lalande they should have got could be replaced for about £130 so a 100% mark up. The rationale is that whether it cost the resto £20 or £200 to buy the overheads in storing, serving etc are the same so you don't need to take the piss quite as much with the expensive bottles and the customer is more inclined to spend more knowing he's having the piss taken slightly less in terms of mark up the more he spends.   

Steak, no matter where it is bought be it a butcher, supermarket, or Sainsburys is not inherently bad. Just the cooking of it can be, ( according to ones personal taste)

there is definitely a dark art to the pricing and selling of old / rare wines.

i posted on here before about some 18 bottles of port left by my stepfather which i was attempting to sell. I found one bottle of it online priced at £890.

i contacted the company selling it to see if they wanted to buy these 18 bottles. Oh we would love to buy it they said, but we cant afford it!! Apparently they only sell 2 bottles a year, they cant have 18 bottles just sitting around for 9 years. They said if they could buy just one or two they might and would offer me £450.

i now have a specialist auctioneer coming to see it. He is coming all the way from Hereford. Of course, he doesnt need to buy it, he just needs to convince me he can sell it.

but to whom?? It isnt exactly flying off the shelves..

One of my best mates from Uni has done the rounds working in 2/3  Rosette Kitchens and had short stints in two Michelin star restaurants. He has regaled me of no end of stories where the Somelier pushes a fine wine for £200 that cost them £30.00

Panorama did a piece where mugs were spending hundreds of pounds on a bottle of wine. It was brought to the table decanted already " so it could breathe". Turned out it was 20 quid super market plonk.

A friend’s father in law ran a very well known high class Mayfair restaurant.

when he had bin ends, instead of promoting them at a reduced rate he would instead double the price - rare opportunity, etc.

they always sold.

Most i've paid for wine was £450 - but I've bought plenty in the £80-150 range and I can promise you I wouldn't take it "Pre-Decanted" I want to see the bottle, watch them take the cork out and decant that fooker right in front of me thanks.  

Tec, agreed, but I have never spent more than a hundred quid on a bottle, once for fathers Birthday at a restaurant,  at once I bought two bottles in a very posh wooden box, a Louis Jadot Claret if I call for a mates engagement present. 

 

But £450.00 tec, crikey, was it a special ocassion?

Yeah.  I was especially drunk already.

It was a 1966 Chateaux Latour at a restaurant in Bristol actually.  This was back in the late 90s.  So it was a spectacularly expensive price when you consider inflation, hehe.

 

Clubbers, I don't know , and I cant recall to be fair. As you can tell my wine knowledge is limited to say the least. I always buy the same wines, at restaurants or for home, variations of Chablis, and Tiagnello 

Nah buzz, it was genuine, the two old french duffers who ran the place were absolutely brilliant and always looked after me.  Both had previously worked at the savoy, not sure if they were gay or just good mates but they lived together and were both about 100 years old(exaggeration obv) yet still worked pretty much every day.

 

No, it was up on whiteladies road called something like maison du francais or maison du gourmet or something.  Was over 20 years ago, so... memory fades....

It looks mostly just like a house outside, but you go in and there's a very elegant restaurant for about 30 covers at most I'd guess.  Great food especially desserts.

 

Well Tec, as someone  who has limited knowledge of wine I didn't just guess the name did I.

 

I think most are agreed spending more than a hundred quid on a bottle be it in a restaurant or shop is a pointless waste of time, save unless it is for "investment purposes"

Well, if that's right, and true, that's a bloody good deal.  I've half cases of the 2013 and 2015 in bond and to pay the duty and VAT (and of course VAT on the duty - HMRC being utter aunts), the cost per bottle would be £75 and £85 

Buzz, I defer to your knowledge , but a longstanding acauaintence/landlord has a very well known independent wine shop where I buy stuff from and he gives it to me at mates rates so to speak. And my father spends what I regard as fortunes at the shop also on a regular basis.

 

That said I am sure I have even spent less in the past.

Well tbf to all those who think that the EU is in many respects a corrupt, wasteful institutions overreaching its mandate more and more each day, I'd be inclined to agree in many respects.  But it's still better than the alternative and I'd rather pay 44p on VAT on the duty on a bottle or wine than not be able to get my hands on it in the first place.

apparently,they aske for another bottle and were told none were available , lol. On a more serious note would anyone here spend 4.5 k on a bottle? Me, no, not even if I won euro millions