Most steakhouses spend a fortune persuading you the room is special. Hawksmoor at St Pancras only had to lift the dust sheets. In late November 2025 the steakhouse that Will Beckett and Huw Gott started in their home town nearly twenty years ago moved into the old dining room of the Midland Grand Hotel on Euston Road, Sir George Gilbert Scott's Gothic Revival masterpiece, and the beef has a lot of gold to compete with.
Conkers, pea pods and pomegranates
The Midland Railway held a competition for a grand hotel beside its terminus in 1865, and Scott's design welcomed its first guests on 5 May 1873. Revolving doors, hydraulic lifts and a fireplace in every room made it one of the most luxurious hotels anywhere. The masons carved the place inside and out, and in the original Dining and Coffee Room the polished limestone pillars carry golden capitals worked with conkers, pea pods and bursting pomegranates. Above them are soaring coffered ceilings, with leather banquettes and pink marble pilasters below.
Charcoal-grilled steak beneath capitals carved with conkers and pomegranates: Hawksmoor finds a room worthy of its beef.
The building then had a hard century: railway offices, three bombings in a month during the war, near demolition in the 1960s until Sir John Betjeman called the plan criminal folly. It reopened as a hotel on 5 May 2011, exactly 138 years after the first opening, and is Grade I-listed. Hawksmoor has added a parquet floor and a Beef and Liberty mural and otherwise let Scott talk. The Martini Bar fills the old Gothic Bar next door.
Two decades of charcoal
Beckett and Gott have grown Hawksmoor into one of Britain's best-known steak names, from Spitalfields, Borough and Guildhall to Knightsbridge, Seven Dials, Air Street and Wood Wharf, with branches in Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh. This room has seen chefs come and go, and Hawksmoor's settled machine may end that run.
What to order
Do not leave without the Longhorn Feast. The rare native breed helped shape the company at the start, and it comes back here as generous dry-aged sharing cuts cooked over live charcoal, with roasted bone marrow and slow-cooked onions. Pair it with beef-dripping chips, which are essential, and Tunworth mash. A steak flight puts four cuts from different farms side by side, from a Hawksmoor Farms rump to a Wildfell Wagyu sirloin, which is a fair way to settle an argument.
Before the beef, the dressed Devon crab is phenomenally good, and the Yorkshire Sloppy Joes, Yorkshire puddings filled with horseradish-spiked Farm Wilder mince, beat the potted beef they riff on. Oysters come with ginger, soy and crispy shallots, and the vegetarian main is a Wellington built on Winslade cheese. It turns into the meat-free Sunday roast. To finish, the Grand Rocher is Hawksmoor's glamorised take on a Ferrero Rocher.
A hedge: the Sloppy Joes were on the bar menu only at the time, the prime rib roast was absent midweek and the bar has changed less than the dining room.
Drinks
The Martini Bar treats the sub-zero martini as the main event, with five on the list and two inspired by Duke's Bar. The Vesper's Vesper, built on Plymouth gin, Absolut Elyx and Sacred Amber vermouth, is the coldest of them. The vaulted room also has a small stage for live music and DJs.
Scott built his dining room for Victorians arriving by steam. It now feeds Eurostar passengers, and the bar next door is a fair reason to miss one.
- The vibe
- Gothic cathedral of a dining room: coffered ceilings, carved capitals, pink marble, parquet.
- The food
- Longhorn Feast, steak flight, dressed Devon crab, Yorkshire Sloppy Joes, beef-dripping chips.
- The drink
- Sub-zero martinis next door in the old Gothic Bar; Vesper's Vesper first.
- A tip
- Share a larger cut, add dripping chips, and have a martini before or after.
