Chophouse Dreams on a Tesco Budget: We Tried the £15 Manhattan Steak Night

There's a particular kind of magic to a Manhattan steakhouse. The dim lighting, the waiter who remembers your name, the wedge of cheesecake the size of a house brick. There's also a particular kind of damage: at Keens or the Smith & Wollenskys of this world, a strip steak, a martini, creamed spinach and dessert will comfortably clear £90 a head before the service charge has even said hello.

But here's the thing we keep coming back to at NY Grill London: none of those dishes is actually complicated. The chophouse markup buys you the velvet booth and the piano player, not the cookery. So we set a challenge — recreate the full Manhattan steak dinner for £15 per person, shopping entirely in British supermarkets. Three cooks, three shopping baskets, one very happy test kitchen.

The Steak: Your £15 Goes Furthest Here

The strip steak — the New York strip, the sirloin, call it what you like — is the centrepiece, and it's where the money matters. Our cooks found the sweet spot was supermarket own-brand British beef sirloin, dry-aged where available. Aldi's Specially Selected sirloin steaks came in at around £5.50 each, and Morrisons' Butcher Club range wasn't far behind.

The trick, as our testers learned, is twofold. First, buy thick — a thin steak is a tragedy no budget can survive. Second, salt it generously and let it sit uncovered in the fridge overnight. That's a poor man's dry-age, and it genuinely concentrates the flavour. One tester found a two-pack of sirloins reduced to clear at 7pm in Sainsbury's Local, which is the kind of victory we believe should be taught in schools.

The Martini: Where the Corners Hide

A chophouse martini is a theatre production: the frozen glass, the tableside shaker, the £14 price tag. At home, it's four ingredients. Own-brand London dry gin — Aldi's Oliver Cromwell and Asda's both scored respectably with our panel — plus a splash of own-brand dry vermouth, a strip of lemon peel and a freezer-cold glass.

Total cost per drink worked out at roughly £2.40, and honestly, after the first one, nobody in the test kitchen could tell the difference between the £2 gin and the boutique bottle. Keep the vermouth in the fridge after opening; that's the only real rule.

Creamed Spinach: The Humble Star

Here's the dish that won the night. Proper steakhouse creamed spinach is just spinach, cream, butter, a whisper of nutmeg and patience. Own-brand frozen spinach — defrosted and squeezed absolutely bone-dry — worked as well as fresh at a third of the price. A glug of double cream, a knob of butter, twenty minutes on a low heat, done. Cost per portion: about 80p.

One tester added a spoonful of grated own-brand parmesan, which is technically heresy but technically delicious.

Cheesecake: Buy, Don't Bake

We're not precious about this. Baking a proper New York cheesecake takes cream cheese, an oven and most of a Saturday — none of which fits a £15 budget or a weeknight. Every major supermarket sells a respectable own-brand New York-style cheesecake for £2–3, and sliced into four, that's 75p a head. Top it with cheap frozen berries stewed down with a spoonful of sugar, and you've got a dessert that would pass in a dimly lit dining room.

The Reckoning

Tally it up: sirloin steak £5.50, martini £2.40, creamed spinach 80p, cheesecake 75p. That's £9.45 — leaving nearly £5.50 of headroom for a decent sourdough loaf, own-brand butter for the table, and a cheeky second gin measure.

Can you recreate a Manhattan chophouse dinner for £15 in a British flat? Not only can you — you can do it with change left for the bus fare you'd have spent getting to the restaurant. The velvet booth, sadly, is not included.