Limited appeal at Popesye

This review was first published in February 2001

Steak: popeseye (rump), sirloin, fillet. Chips. Salad. There, in its entirety, you have the menu of Popeseye. From this you can probably infer that beef is where we're at, Aberdeen Angus, lengthily hung and chargrilled at nuclear heat to an exterior crispness, so much so that a miasma of toasted flesh clung to me till the next morning.

What you see is what you get with this tiny restaurant, with a stressed and extremely hot-looking chef performing from a corner of the room, endlessly churning out the plates of meat. The only stab at embellishment is a relish-tray - oh, shades of the 1980s - containing a choice of mustards, horseradish and an excellent béarnaise.

'Ignore the film crew,' instructed our rather surly waitress; a difficult feat in a place of this size when a bear-sized chap wielding a TV camera thrusts it, a spotlight and a boom mike in your face. Typical, the one night we choose to visit, a team from American ABC TV is, inexplicably, in situ, not even having the courtesy to ask if we'd like a massive lens shoved in our mushes.

My 12oz sirloin was over-bloody (I asked for medium rare) and unyielding; the eponymous popeseye spread itself generously over a large plate but was, again, on the tough side. Chips tasted frozen. And despite its homespun air, it ain't cheap: £18 for my steak. For a place with such a limited specialism, it could do better.