Cattle Grid restaurant
1, Balham Station Road
London SW12 9SG
Tel. 020 8673 9099
Reviewed on Thursday 14 May 2009
Cattle Grid restaurant in Balham
The Cattle Grid restaurant in Balham is located right in front of the Balham train station, you cannot miss it, especially with the big cow on the sidewalk 😉
They do not have table service so you have to order at the counter in front of the kitchen. You can actually see your steaks being cooked. We ordered a 10oz Sirloin with a green peppercorn sauce served with chips and watercress and a full rack of baby back pork ribs served with chips. Actually I wanted a 16oz T-Bone but it was not available so I had the pig instead. A little surprising to be out of stock since it was not that late, just past 8pm. Many beers from Australasia so we decided to go with the NZ Mac’s Gold which were not bad at all. The dinner was disappointing: the sirloin was good, decently cooked but the green peppercorn sauce was seriously bad to the point it had to be avoided. It was better to eat the steak with some mayonnaise than with the sauce (see the last photo, you can see a little bit of the sirloin with mayonnaise I tried). We really wondered what happened to that sauce since it is not that hard to make a pepper sauce (actually we suspected it was ‘off’…). The rack of ribs had also its share of surprise: it was not hot at all and even on the cold side, as if it was cooked an hour ago. That was a real shame since it tasted good (it was marinated in a good barbecue sauce) and the meat could be very easily detached from the bones. No need for fingers. I was very upset because this could have been an excellent meal if served normally hot. It should have been so easy to put it under the grill for a few minutes to have it warm! The fries were good, and hot at least.
NZ Mac's Gold beer!
10oz Sirloin with a green peppercorn sauce served with chips and watercress
Full rack of baby back ribs served with chips
Overview of the two plates
The meat was very easy to detach
Cost and conclusion: it was a little over £33 for the sirloin, the ribs and two beers. The value for money isn’t bad but being served a room-temperature rack of ribs and running out of T-bones at 8pm for a steakhouse is not acceptable (not to mention the peppercorn sauce issue).
