Swiss Butter London

£20 for a halal steak and chips dinner in central London? This headline from Swiss Butter London has certainly grabbed everyone’s attention. The launch of the Middle Eastern franchise in London has stirred quite a hype, rather notoriously attracting long queues every day. We thought the hype may have died down by now, but nope – the queues were still going strong despite visiting for an early dinner on a weekday. Luckily, most people were after a small table and the big round table was almost immediately available for our group of six.

Swiss Butter: Three Mains, Two Desserts

The menu at Swiss Butter is very straightforward. All you need to decide is whether you fancy steak (ribeye/fillet), chicken, or salmon. Whichever mains you choose, the meal comes with a mesclun salad, baguette slices, chilli flakes, and either fries or a baked potato. If that’s still not enough, you can order additional side dishes. During our visit, they also ran a special Wagyu burger on the menu. As for desserts, there are only two options – either the Molten Chocolate or Pain Perdu.

Ribeye (£19.95)

Clearly, this is a Le Entrecote wannabe, but I’m afraid it’s just not hitting the spot. For the price, it’s expected that it’ll just be a mediocre-quality steak without much fatty marbling. However, it’s very much under-seasoned, with hardly any flavour from the ribeye steak itself. All one could taste was the “secret sauce”, which was a tad overly vinegary and overpowering the meat. None of the sides were anything noteworthy. The “mesclun” salad was a mere boring toss of romaine lettuce with salad cream and both the fries and bread were just rather basic stuff.

Wagyu Burger (£19.95)

We also tried the Wagyu burger special, which was okay but nothing particularly memorable. The seasoning for the burger patty certainly fared better than that for the steak. It was lightly laced with the sauce, offering a subtle tangy touch. However, it also came with a separate pot of the sauce which felt completely redundant as it certainly doesn’t work as a burger dip. Everything else was just mediocre as mentioned with the steak.

Looking for a good halal Wagyu burger in London? We recommend checking out Flip & Sear in Camden!

Molten Chocolate (£9.95)

For desserts, we opted for the Molten Chocolate after hearing many raving reviews. The portion was pretty large and was perfect for sharing. However, I wasn’t impressed with it. Ultimately, it was just a cheaply made chocolate hazelnut cake warmed up on a skillet, topped with vanilla ice cream and sauce poured over. It wasn’t bad per se, but it lacked finesse, with an unbalanced richness dumped together like a cheap microwaved dessert.