Meaty 4 hands goodness
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| Sirloin tartare |
I am a super fan of Ibai, and I was lucky enough to have the chance to visit Cas Julian in the past. So when my No1 London restaurant is hosting a one-off special event to cook up a storm together with the team from Casa Julian, I booked without thinking. The occasion carried a simple promise: take a house known for absolute devotion to beef and let it exist, briefly, somewhere else, without dilution. Casa Julián arrived not as a brand but as a practice. The knives, the boards, the quiet confidence of the grill team told you immediately that this wasn’t a pop-up chasing novelty. It was a transplant. The first smells were smoke and fat, familiar to anyone who has stood near that grill in Tolosa, but slightly uncanny in a different setting.
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| Cep mushrooms |
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| Grilled artichokes |
The artichokes arrived clean and direct, had a burnt aroma with a soft, tender texture, served with a killer cured ham sauce, with no apology for their intensity. The mushrooms followed, sweet and rich, handled gently and delivered such a powerful taste. The steak itself was truly special; the Galician rib steak had such a bold, meaty flavour, deep and savory. This is what mastery looks like when it’s been practiced for decades. Salt was applied with confidence, not caution. The fat melted into the meat, carrying smoke and iron and something almost sweet. There was no sauce to hide behind, no garnish to distract.
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| Barrosa steak |
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| Basque cheesecake |
By the end of the lunch, what stayed with me wasn’t just the taste, but the feeling of having participated in something precise and fleeting. This wasn’t an event designed to be scalable or repeated in other cities. It worked because it didn’t try to adapt. Casa Julián remained itself, stubbornly so, and Ibai understood that the best way to honor that was to create the stage for it. In a food culture obsessed with reinvention, this lunch argued quietly for continuity. It reminded everyone in the room that excellence doesn’t need constant explanation or reinvention. It needs care, time, and people willing to protect it, even temporarily, in unfamiliar places.
Food 4.5/5
What I paid: £125 per person with wine
Average cost without drinks and services: £80 (dinner)
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