Reviews of Three Cranes

What a wonderful gem of a pub tucked away in an alley next to Mansion House Station. Loved it! It is a tiny pub downstairs but there is also a restaurant on the first floor + a function room above, them rooms to stay (after a bit of indulgence on the ground floor) above that. The staff behind the bar are lovely and happy to help make your stay memorable. A lovely nook to sit in behind the main bar room. Beers lovely with a great pint of Stiegl. Timothy Taylor's landlord on for the cask enthusiasts. This is a thoroughly pleasant place to pop into for food or drinks, recommended! My only caveat is to be aware that the pub does not open over the weekend.

The Three Cranes has been refurbished and is open under new management with a new menu.  They are soft launching until tomorrow night, December 13 2018, with half price on food and house wine.  Other beverages at full price.  I was surprised to see some empty tables tonight during the soft launch period so if you are looking for somewhere to eat in the City this Wednesday night I would recommend booking the Three Cranes.<br/><br/>The restaurant is a small room on the first floor above the pub seating 30.  Genteel woody atmosphere with leather banquettes.  Lighting level a little too low for my preference, but we could still read the menus. It's a pub, so service is casual, but they care enough about the food that you get new cutlery for each course.<br/><br/>The new menu is strictly for carnivores, and specifically red meat eaters.  For starters there was a frisee based salad, charcuterie, steak tartare and smoked eel with horseradish cream.  Mains all come with fries and salad and consisted of rib eye, onglet and lamb chops.  Everything is well sourced and well executed.<br/><br/>We shared the charcuterie which was a nice variety of thinly sliced dry salamis and chorizos, a splodge of excellent nduja, as well as gherkins and some refreshing celeriac remoulade.<br/><br/>For mains I wanted the onglet which is an excellent cut to have very rare.  Unfortunately it was sold out so I had the 10 ounce rib eye with bone marrow butter.  I ordered it rare, but they produced it somewhere between medium rare and rare which is a knowledgable compromise for a cut that is really too fatty to eat rare.  Wonderfully soft and a nice charred crust having been grilled at very high heat.  My companion was equally impressed by his two lamb chops.  He didn't specify how he wanted them cooked but they came medium rare and were extremely tender.  His anchovy and rosemary butter was an excellent accompaniment.<br/><br/>Sides were great.  Chips were beautifully crunchy on the outside and pillowy on the inside.  Surprising not at all greasy so mostly likely fried twice at an extremely high temperature.  Side salad contained a large variety of leaves with varying degrees of pepperiness and herbiness.  I couldn't identify all the greens.<br/><br/>Priced normally, the excellent house red would have set us back £19.50 which I consider good value.  At full price our meal for two would have been £74 before the service charge.  If they hadn't been sold out of my preferred smaller onglet, dinner would have been £64 at full price which is modest for superb steak in the City.