An admirably efficient steakhouse in the Swiss capital
Salt, fire and happy old cows
This article is taken from the June 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £25.
In 2006, a restaurant called The Popeseye opened on Blythe Road, W14, with three things on the menu: steak, chips and salad. Aside from Béarnaise sauce and a few mustards, that was it.
At the time, this felt wildly radical, for these were the Michelin years — Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck was officially the Best Restaurant in the World, Gordon Ramsay was in Chelsea, Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester. With Le Gavroche at its stately zenith, London was claiming its place as a culinary epicentre.
Stars made stars, and in case anyone thought that throwing an hysterical hissy because the commis had incorrectly tweezered the mosaique de foie gras was not quite manly, they also promoted the macho super-chef, the frenzied, foul-mouthed prima donnas of the pastry station whose antics made the front pages as reliably as their awards.
Beef was the word — Jamie’s feud with Marco, Gordon’s with everyone — against which the Popeseye choosing to just serve it seemed almost impossibly daring.
At the time, the Popeseye looked like someone’s hastily-converted sitting room and the smell of chip fat got stuck in your hair, but the steak was great and the blood-and-salt simplicity was sexy.
The restaurant celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary this year, and though I haven’t been for ages, it popped into my mind when I was looking for somewhere to eat in Bern.
A “popeseye” is the Scots word for rump steak, or more unattractively the lymphatic gland in a cow or sheep’s thigh; it is also 17th century anti-Catholic slang for the human anus.
One can see why steak might be a Protestant thing: plain, unadorned, none of your fussy Romish recipes disguising dubious ingredients that a cardinal might serve to a catamite.
Béarnaise, the best sauce for it, was named for the birthplace of Henri IV by its creator Jean-Louis Collinet in 1836, for the opening of the Pavillon Henri IV in a former royal residence.
Henri himself famously declared that Paris was well worth a Mass, but he protected his Huguenot hometown by refusing to annex Bearne to France after the Edict of Nantes in 1598 to avoid the restoration of Catholic properties.
(The Scots connection between steak and the refutation of Popish practices made me wonder if it was served at the banquet the stern Covenanters grudgingly gave to Charles II for his coronation at Scone in 1651. In fact, they gave him salmon and partridge; he lied through Burgundy-stained teeth and converted on his death bed.)
The meat-and-no-frills formula has become ubiquitous, but Williams Butchers Table in Bern still rather sweetly advertises itself as the 51st best steakhouse in the world. It’s on the ground floor of the Loeb department store in the 19th century zone of the Swiss capital, a few minutes from the glorious medieval quarter and its Protestantised Gothic cathedral.
The space is soothing and pretty, a bit Mitteleuropa, with green walls, bright wood, white candles and extremely correct napkins, but the vibe is all man.
Staff are leather-aproned hipster urchins; a bearded giant unnervingly titled “Chief Butcher” supervises customer’s selections, slicing and weighing behind a huge chill cabinet.
Like the Popeseye, choice is limited to meat, potatoes and salad, with two starters: a lobster bisque and a bracingly carnivorous “Boneshot”: hot, deliquescent marrow with salt, lemon and a side of vodka. Obviously, I knocked that right back, then waited for a finicky French stag party to debate bison over wagyu before choosing a vast Swiss-bred Hohrücken for myself.
This being Switzerland, the butcher was almost too polite to react (why is it still a newsflash that we little ladies eat?), and we had a satisfying chat about the correct weight/cuisson ratio.
Very Swiss too were the meticulous, earnest menu descriptions of the peacefully fulfilled lives the beasts being served up had led. Iberico pigs rootle through 6 kg of acorns per day on a hectare of Salamanca forest apiece: “if you take a four-room apartment in Switzerland measuring 100 square metres, then each pig lives on land covering 100 of these apartments”.
New Zealand lambs frolic over “lush, expansive meadows”, whilst the non-hormone treated US Black Angus enjoy “idyllic open savannah”. One might envy them but for the bluntly noted Slaughter Age: 18 months for Swiss-raised Charolais, 10 years for the ingenuously-named “Old Cows”.
Style and length of ageing are also detailed, as though here pleasure in the baser urges is permissible only after a scrupulous examination of one’s conscience. I don’t know whether the moral fortification heightened the savour of the sirloin, which didn’t matter as it could hardly have been improved upon.
Charred, sanguineous meat and paprika butter were set off by a sprauncy herb salad with “Granny’s dressing” and slender, sprightly chips.
Wines are brief and to the point, four white, four red, at 11 CHF per glass. I don’t recall the Popeseye offering pudding, but Williams’s five desserts are unfussily on-message. The caramelkopfli with whipped cream was one of the least Puritan things I’ve ever eaten, a great wobbly punch of sweet vanilla fat, like taking a bite of a Lely nude. Williams may never win a star, but it is as good as it is virtuous.
Williams Butchers Table, Gurtengasse 4, Bern, Switzerland
