Graze Bar and Chophouse – An evening of steak and dessert

Since the closure of Cau, the Argentine steakhouse which was our favourite place to eat steak, we have been searching for a new venue. Recently we have been going to the Bar and Block next to the Premier Inn. They do a decent steak for a good price but we are yet to find somewhere that can really replace Cau. This week we are taking Graze for a steak taste testing.

We have a new contender

Graze is one of the more expensive and higher end places to eat. It is also a great place to meet up with friends and colleagues in the evenings for drinks.

The entrance is down the left side of the building. As you can see from the picture its high up so be prepared for steps. There is a lift just inside the door to the right so don’t worry if you would rather avoid the climb.

Once you get to the top you can either wait to be seated for a table in the restaurant area or walk to the bar to get drinks. The restaurant area looks out onto the train tracks and there is also a smoking area outside should you need it. The other seating area is on the right overlooking the SouthGate shopping area. You also have a great view of the microbrewery equipment.

I know my picture of Graze isn’t great. To start with you cant see the ‘a’ in Graze but I wanted to show parts of Bath at night but traffic was busy. Near the train station is a great area with several other venues for food, cocktails and even a new cinema. Bath does look fantastic at night as there are usually some sort of lights or decorations out for most of the year.

The Menu

We are now entering spring, well at least before it gets cold one final time prior to summer, so be warned the menu may change over the next few weeks. The above shows the menu we ordered from at the time as well as the prices. There are many other options for vegetarians as well as fish and options for burger lovers but for us we were on the hunt for steak.

Let there be steaks

First let us say that we skipped the starters. What usually happens is that we have starters then eat most of the main and are way too full for dessert so this time I checked the dessert menu first. Having decided that dessert was definitely on the agenda we jumped straight to the main course, steak.

Let me first of all say that the steaks were both cooked to perfection. We both ordered sirloin steaks which is our usual cut. I ordered mine medium rare and my wife has hers medium well. They arrived exactly as ordered, at the same time, with nothing but salivating mouths ready to jump in.

What you get with your steak

All of their steaks come with chips and dressed leaves with the option to upgrade your chips to sweet potatoes fries for a small additional cost. We just had the normal chips and they too were delicious. Slightly crispy to the bite yet hot and fluffy on the inside. They were salted which may be too salty for some but that’s the way I prefer them.

The peppercorn sauce was also quite rich in flavour as you can see from its deep colour. My wife thought that it was a bit salty and after thinking about it at the time I did start to agree. I still liked it and would absolutely order it again. I did however pour my sauce over my chips so it may have just been partly from the salt on the chips powering through.

We chose to have a side dish of garlic and thyme mushrooms which were good. There were plenty to share between the two of us. We do typically go for mushrooms as a side whenever we have steak. This also makes comparisons from venue to venue much easier.

On to Dessert

As I said earlier we skipped starters in order to be able to taste some desserts and here are our choices. My choice was the apple and cinnamon crumble as I usually choose the cheesecake.

I do worry a little bit as I know most places add sultanas and I am not a fan of them at all. In this case the worry was justified. The apple to sultana ratio was quite high as I spent a lot of time moving them out of the way.

A few sultanas were expected but I thought that there were way too many for the size of the portion. I also couldn’t taste much cinnamon but that could just be my unrefined palette after the steaks. When I make crumble I like the topping to be quite thick which was the opposite case here.

The chocolate brownie does look much smaller than the crumble. In all fairness it was smaller but it was also quite rich in flavour. Chocolate lovers however should feel this is enough to satiate their chocolate craving.

Final thoughts

All in all our meal at Graze was pretty good. I would choose a different dessert next time and go for the cheesecake unless the menu changes. The steaks are certainly our favourites as they were cooked perfectly and had very good flavour.

Whilst it was a more expensive night than usual I think that was more down to us having two desserts. The steaks were not overly expensive and considering they were cooked to perfection they were well worth the money.

I think Graze will certainly be our new steak venue at least for the time being. We will see what they have to offer when the menus change later in the summer.