Le Relais de Venise L‘Entrecôte: The Freedom of No Choice
Le Relais de Venise L‘Entrecôte
The British have always harboured a faintly masochistic love affair with queuing. We queue for Wimbledon tickets, we queue for airport security, we queue - often with existential regret - for a lukewarm G&T at the theatre bar. And in Marylebone, a particularly dedicated breed of diner queues, rain or shine, for steak frites at Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte.
On a Thursday evening in February, we joined the faithful. For 45 minutes, we shuffled forward, stamping our feet against the cold, watching others being ushered inside while contemplating the state of our own decision-making. The savvy pub across the road offers mulled wine and takeaway beers from a window. Just when your resilience is wavering, questioning whether any meal could possibly be worth standing in the cold this long, a wave of sizzling steak and warm, garlicky butter drifts out the door, and you’re reinvigorated.
Inside, the tables are crammed in tighter than a Valentine’s Day restaurant, so snug that a waitress has to drag your table out to let one of you slide onto the banquette. The room is a charmingly Parisian throwback—waitresses in black dresses and white aprons, claret-red banquettes, the clatter of cutlery against china. No bookings, no menus, no nonsense.
The format is simple to the point of tyranny: there is one dish, and you shall have it. No QR-code menus, no modish sharing plates, no oat-milk flat whites. Vegetarian? Best of luck elsewhere. The only choice you are granted is how you’d like your steak cooked—and even then, the choice is simple. Requesting medium-rare, I was met with a brisk, “Medium OR rare?” - delivered with the kind of patient exasperation that suggests this question has been answered a thousand times before. We both opted for rare, being seasoned steak aficionados who view anything medium and beyond as an offense to the cow. However the couple next to us went for medium, and I’ll admit - theirs also looked excellent, perfectly pink but not overdone.
Dinner begins with a crisp green salad, lightly dressed with mustard vinaigrette and scattered with walnuts. No frills, no fuss—just a well-balanced prelude to what’s to come. Then, the pièce de résistance: slices of perfectly cooked sirloin, bathed in their mysterious, herb-laced, green-gold sauce, the recipe for which has been the subject of endless speculation. Some insist it’s laced with chicken livers, others detect hints of mustard, tarragon, anchovies, perhaps even a whisper of curry powder. It’s béarnaise-adjacent but with a more complex, elusive umami depth that has fueled decades of speculation. Despite endless deep dives on Google and Reddit, the secret is guarded with the kind of vigilance usually reserved for nuclear codes or a Parisian woman’s real age.
Alongside it comes a mound of classic golden frites, thin enough for crunch, substantial enough to soak up every last drop of sauce - the kind that demand to be mindlessly dipped, devoured, and reordered were it not for what happens next.
Just as you’re mopping up the last of the sauce, suppressing a sigh of replete satisfaction, the waitress returns—bearing an entirely new portion of steak and fries. No one warns you, no one asks if you’d like more. It is simply placed in front of you, as though you’re Henry VIII at a particularly indulgent feast. The real joy is in watching a first-timer’s expression of delighted disbelief - having assumed they were finished, only to be served the same amount all over again.
Two servings of steak, French fries, and that infamous sauce—all for £31 per head.
Desserts, if you have the stamina, are classic French bistro fare. We shared the profiteroles—choux pastry stuffed with ice cream, drowned in a glossy, deeply French, molten chocolate sauce that deserves to be eaten with a spoon straight from the jug. Other options include tarte au citron, crème brûlée, and the towering Vacherin du Relais. The wine list is brief, unapologetically French, and leans heavily on Bordeaux - though really, all you need is a carafe of house red.
For all its quirks - the queue, the dictatorship over steak temperatures, the lack of elbow room—Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte is a masterclass in doing one thing exceptionally well. No reinventions, no nods to modernity—just steak, frites, and a secret sauce that has seduced diners from Paris to London, New York, Mexico City, and Monaco.
As we tumbled back onto the pavement, replete and vaguely smug, we glanced at the queue still stretching down the street. Would we do it all over again? Of course we would. Some things are worth the wait.
120 Marylebone Lane
