Hamburger tacos
So what do I need to know about Temper?
It's the new restaurant from Neil Rankin - whose food you may previously have enjoyed at the likes of Pitt Cue, Smokehouse and Bad Egg. This is billed as "celebrating live fire cooking, tacos and wine". It's all about mix and matching specialist breed meats, cooked in a variety of ways, with some rather special veggie dishes.
Where is it?
On Broadwick Street, just a few doors down from Yauatcha, in the heart of Soho.
Temper's impressive grill at work...
And where should we meet friends for a drink first?
You're spoilt for choice. Just round the corner is Duck & Rice, there's the bar at Social Eating House for cocktails or you could go old-school with a pint at the Star & Garter on Poland Street.
What's the set-up? Where should we sit?
It depends on how many of you there are. If you're dining solo or a deux, then there's only one place you want to be, and that's up at the counter, watching the chefs at work. We set beside the chap making flatbreads and it was a very soothing process to watch. But if there's a group of you, then you'll be much better off in one of the banquettes at the side of the room - there were some pretty raucous dinners going on when we were in.
The lamb and flatbread
So it's not somewhere to take my vegetarian date/friend/colleague then?
You could, in theory, manage to eat a meal of vegetable and fish dishes here, but honestly, you'd be missing the point. The menu rather confusingly starts with small plates and tacos - but the only difference between the categories is that the tacos come ready-assembled, while the plates are, in fact, DIY tacos. Of the three we had, the must-haves are the aged cheeseburger (£8) served with crispy provolone cheese, chipotle sour cream and green sauce and the beef fat taco - made with glistening little cubes of beef fat
For your main course, begin by picking from the list of meats on that day. They recommend around 200g per person, and each meat starts at a minimum of 100g. When we visited we could choose between Longhorn beef, Middlewhite pork, Welsh lamb and goat, ranging in price from £7 to £9.50 per 100g. There's also a few other dishes - a Burnt end Thai larb made from the burnt brisket ends and a mutton and aged beef kofta.
All of these come on freshly baked flatbread, so bear that in mind when you're eyeing up the sides.
Digging into the beef fat potatoes with raclette
That said, when the sides are this good, you're still going to want them - our must-orders are the beef fat potatoes with raclette (£5), either a hangover-avoider or hangover cure depending on what kind of week you're having. And the burrata, lime and jalapeno (£7) might seem like an odd order, but it worked as a nice contrast to our meat-fest.
There are a lot of sauces on offer but we preferred to taste the meat for what it was.
You could drink your desserts - the Tough Cookie (Demerara rum, vanilla ice cream, maraschino, mozart dry - £10) was fabulous - but if you make it this far then you'll definitely want the warm, deep dish brigadeiro soft-centre cookie (£5.50)
Cookies and cookies for dessert.
And to drink?
The wine list here IS impressive and there was a decent choice by the glass or carafe, which is useful if you're intending to work your way through the Mezcal list later. Our carafe of Mr Thirsty, Vin de Soif came served chilled and didn't break the bank at £20.
Overall thoughts:
We visited a few weeks after it had opened and, clearly, word has already got out - the place was wedged on a Thursday evening. Rankin's got a total hit on his hands and Londoners have a new palace of meat on their doorstep and one which is really reasonably priced, given its location.
Want to see more? Check out our full Facebook gallery of the meal here.
Temper is at Trenchard House, 19-25 Broadwick St, London W1F 0DF. Keep up with their news on Twitter @temperldn
Hot Dinners were invited to Temper - prices were correct at the time of writing.
