maze Grill

Press Reviews (9)

• John Walsh (28th July 2008)
  Food: 4/5 stars, Ambience: 3/5 stars, Service 4/5 stars
  
  The critic visits the Ramsay empire’s new(ish) steakhouse, where he finds most of the fare to notably “appealing”, if no particular bargain.
• Matthew Norman (7th July 2008)
  7.5/10
  
  A restaurant “possibly conceived more to capitalise on disused space in a Marriott hotel than through any passion for the idea” – the critic doesn’t really seem to like this “sterile and soulless” new member of the Ramsay empire (in which context the grading awarded seems rather on the generous side).
• Marina O'Loughlin (5th June 2008)
  3/5 stars
  
  The Ramsay group’s new Mayfair steak place is “so butch it should be advertising in the back pages of Boyz magazine”, says the critic… Perhaps that's why they haven't bothered making the place look too stylish”. She finds the steaks good but “wildly expensive”, especially those sold at ‘market price’. (There are, as she so sagely observes, “no words on a menu that could strike more fear into a diner's heart – apart from 'chef patron Jean-Christophe Novelli' – than 'market price'”.) “Though good, [the steaks are] simply not as memorable as their Stateside counterparts.”
• Zoe Williams (28th May 2008)
  7/10
  
  “The night we were in, Gordon Ramsay was wandering about, glad-handing. Pre-Kitchen Nightmares, that would have been par for the course in a new opening; but now, and coupled with the raw meat, I have to say it added to the air of menace.” The critic finds this new Mayfair steakhouse a somewhat intimidating destination, but is impressed by the quality of the meat.
• Giles Coren (12th May 2008)
  7.67/10
  
  “[S]teak-twats”, apparently, are “even worse than burger-twats” – “[t]hey’re always just back from New York or Argentina or Pope’s Eye in Hammersmith and are just desperate to describe the nuttiness, the juice and twang of grass-fed Charolais, the cordite whiff of griddle lines and the rich egginess of the fat”. “They have this dream of anthracitic external blackness and minerality, of coarse saltiness, of a deep, juicy redness revealed when the cut halves of the meat are peeled open and pushed apart; an internal, blushing ripeness, ethereally tender to the touch, yielding a little moisture under pressure, smooth on the tongue, pale in flavour but strong in scent, seeming almost to swell as it enters the mouth…”
• Guy Dimond (8th May 2008)
  2/6 stars
  
  In the first ‘down’ review of Ramsay’s new Mayfair steakhouse, the critic concedes that service is “charming” and the room “pleasant enough”, but he finds the cooking “surprisingly hit and miss”. “In New York City, a steak house this expensive and disappointing would have any Brooklyn cab driver choking on his New York strip…”
• Jay Rayner (6th May 2008)
  
  “Maze Grill, in London's Grosvenor Square, is the most interesting opening from Ramsay’s outfit in a long while, piloted by one of his most interesting chefs”, says the critic. In a testosterone-charged review, he’s bowled over by the steaks, but “elsewhere… Maze falters”, and the style of the place seems a little “prim and proper”.
• Richard Vines (1st May 2008)
  4/4 stars
  
  The critic is so swept away by Ramsay’s new Mayfair steakhouse that he makes it the first ever recipent of the top 4/4 star award in his recently-introduced rating system.
• Fay Maschler (17th April 2008)
  4/5 stars
  
  Jason Atherton is the best chef in the Gordon Ramsay empire, opines the doyenne of the critic. She has followed him since his days at the former Anis in Kensington. Her review of his new Mayfair steakhouse – inspired by Brooklyn’s Peter Luger (and its trendier Manhattan descendants) – is an unusually consistent hymn of praise.