The menu positioning of the skirt-n-chips does a disservice only to the easily overlooked selections listed below it: suckling pig and dandelion, sea bass, baked celeriac & shard, bacon & beans. Like a vaudeville comic asked to take the late-show stage after the Marx Brothers you just don’t want to be billed beneath the St John’s take on steak frites. Here that classic duo is a crusty, crispy, saucy, succulent and thoroughly satisfying act to catch ’round midnight or thereabouts.

At £16.40 it would be one of the most alluring late-night relationships between quality and price anywhere were it not for a push-up wine list with premiums that make its exclusively French options look more fully bodied than they are (an act of illusion hardly foreign to Leicester Square). Having steak frites without red wine goes against my belief system, no matter how late the hour, but so does paying double, triple or quadruple the price of those steak frites for a bottle.

Please please, Mr Henderson, add a good, young £20 table red to the wine list, even if you have to list it in small print at the very bottom, beneath your phone number and url. Otherwise any overpriced alternatives printed below it might become as unnoticed as the poor schnook asked to close for Groucho.

The next youngandfoodish Steak Frites Tasting Dinner will be Tuesday 25 May in the private dining room of Racine Restaurant in London.

The menu will again feature three steak classics – onglet aux échalottes, filet au poivre, côte de boeuf – prepared by chef Henry Harris with the finest cuts of dry-aged, grass-fed beef selected by Darragh O’Shea of the great London butcher O’Shea’s of Knightsbridge. Each steak will be matched to a red wine selected by Peter Lowe of Berkmann Wine Cellars:

Space is limited. Book now.

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Mastering the cuts – watch the videos

Why do you love steak frites? – see the winning response in #steakfrites twitter competiton

Enter the why do you love #steakfrites? twitter contest to win the filet au poivre pictured above, along with Racine’s onglet aux échalottes and côte de boeuf and of course frites.

In the second part of steak frites – mastering the cuts, Henry Harris reveals the shalls and shall nots of onglet aux échalottes. Onglet, a butcher’s cut, may also be called skirt, hanger or, if it’s the prized onglet from O’Shea’s of Knightsbridge seen in this video, “Steak O’Shea”.

If the video has made you salivate, as its producers intended, then it’s the perfect time to enter our “why do you love steak frites?” competition. The winner and his or her guest will be invited to the 22 March debut of the youngandfoodish steak frites tasting dinners at Racine Restaurant.

The daily release of the videos, shot by Brian Jones and co-produced by events partner Dino Joannides, will form the backdrop of our “why do you love steak frites?” competition on twitter, hopefully inspiring your most poetic, passionate or playful responses. [HOW TO ENTER THE COMPETITION].

The winner, along with his or her guest, will be invited to the premiere of the youngandfoodish steak frites tasting dinners at Racine on Monday, 22nd March. Henry Harris will prepare three cuts of O’Shea beef in the styles best suited to each: onglet aux échalottes, filet au poivre, côte de boeuf with béarnaise sauce. The meat will be matched to three bistro-style reds selected by Peter Lowe of Berkmann Wine Cellars.

Of course there is no steak frites without potatoes. Not just any potatoes, but floury potatoes cut in the ideal shape for holding and dipping. As Harris explains in the first video, you never need to use a fork with frites.

To receive all the steak frites videos, subscribe to the youngandfoodish youtube channel.

• First warm the steaks to room temperature.
• Use a nonstick skillet so not much oil and butter are required.
• Use an oil with a high smoke point, such as soybean (soya), grapeseed, peanut (groundnut) or canola (rapeseed).
• Add the butter to the pan just before the steaks, not giving it time to brown.

This recipe for a pan-fried bistro steak with Béarnaise sauce, from The Bistros, Brasseries & Wine Bars of Paris, is an adaptation of Le Bistrot Pau Bert’s entrecôte grillé.

Makes 4 servings

4 rib, rib-eye or sirloin steaks, 3/4 inch thick, 8 to 10 oz (225-285g) each
4 tablespoons peanut (groundnut), soybean (soya) or grapeseed oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
salt
freshly ground black pepper
Béarnaise sauce

1. Remove the steaks from the refrigerator 30 to 60 minutes before cooking them.
2. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in 2 large nonstick skillets over high heat until very hot. Drop 1 tablespoon butter in each pan, immediately add the steaks and sear for 3 minutes (for medium rare). Turn the steaks, season the cooked sides with salt and pepper and sear the uncooked sides for 3 minutes.
3. Transfer the steaks onto plates, season with salt and pepper and serve immediately with Béarnaise sauce and frites.