Four steak rooms on the Wharf, read the way a host reads them

Why steak keeps winning the client dinner

A client dinner is rarely about the food, which is exactly why steak works. Everyone at the table can read the menu. Nobody has to ask what anything is. Service moves at a predictable pace, the wine list leans towards red, and the conversation carries on while a waiter carves. Canary Wharf has four rooms that do this well, and each has its own temperament.

Choose by the purpose of the evening rather than the beef. A dinner meant to close something needs quiet and generous space between tables. A dinner meant to celebrate needs noise and a little theatre. A dinner meant to get to know someone needs a room quiet enough for two voices at normal volume.

Timing matters as much as the room. On a weeknight, book for seven rather than half past eight. Plenty of people on the estate start early, and a table at seven leaves space for a drink afterwards without anyone glancing at a watch and thinking about the morning.

Hawksmoor Wood Wharf: the room on the water

Hawksmoor's Canary Wharf restaurant stands in a glass-walled pavilion at the edge of the dock at Wood Wharf, the newer quarter on the estate's eastern side. The water surrounds it on almost every side, and on a clear evening the new towers across the basin light up while you eat. The beef is British, from native breeds, cooked over charcoal, and the big sharing cuts are sold by weight, which makes ordering for four simple: one or two large steaks, several sides, and nobody comparing their plate with anyone else's.

It is the most versatile of the four. Lively enough for a celebration, it is also calm enough at a corner table on a Tuesday to talk terms. For a larger group, ask when booking whether a private or semi-private space is available.

Goodman on South Quay: for people who care about ageing

Across the footbridge on the south side of the dock, Goodman made its reputation on beef aged in-house, and it rewards a guest who genuinely wants to discuss the difference between cuts, breeds and weeks in the ageing room. The room is traditional: dark wood, leather banquettes, the look of a serious steakhouse in any financial district in the world.

It suits the client who is a committed eater, and a dinner where the host wants the food itself to carry the first half hour of conversation. Being slightly off the main estate keeps the room calmer on a Thursday than anything around the squares.

Gaucho at Westferry Circus: the river and the Malbec

Gaucho sits on the river at Canary Riverside, at the western tip of the estate, and serves Argentine beef with a wine list heavy on Malbec and the rest of South America. The view out of the windows is the Thames rather than the docks, and the walk there along West India Avenue puts a little distance between the office and the table.

It is the best of the four for a dinner that should feel like an occasion: a deal signed that afternoon, a visitor from abroad on their one free night. It is also the closest to Canary Riverside Plaza, which matters if the evening is going to end at a river hotel.

Boisdale in Cabot Place: steak with a stage

Boisdale of Canary Wharf is the outlier. Scottish beef, a very long whisky list and live music most nights, on a stage the whole room can see. It is not the place to negotiate anything. It is the place to take a team after a strong quarter, or a client who has had enough of being entertained in hushed rooms.

If an evening has a business half and a social half, a useful pattern is to eat at one of the quieter three and then walk over to Cabot Place for the second set.

When a companion joins the table

Some hosts bring a companion to a client dinner because they are travelling alone and would rather not arrive as a party of one. Others do it because a table of two clients and one host goes better with a fourth voice. Either way, the role is specific. She is a guest at the table, not the subject of it. She is briefed beforehand on the names, the purpose of the evening and anything best left alone, and she keeps the talk light when it should be light and steps back when business begins.

The corporate event companion page explains how the briefing works and what she will and will not do. For an evening that is simply dinner for two after a long day, the four-hour dockside dinner date at £900 comfortably covers a steakhouse table and the walk afterwards.

For client dinners we most often suggest Karolina, whose English is precise and dry and whose poise never slips; Samanta, composed, attentive and at ease in any formal room; and Milena, who orders her steak rare without opening the menu and can make a reserved client laugh. All three are among our statuesque companions, at 174 cm or taller.

Booking the table and the evening

Book the restaurant first, then the companion. Tell the desk the restaurant, the time the table is booked for and the name it is under, and whether she should arrive with you, before you or after the clients. If the evening continues at your hotel, add the hotel and the room so that the one check we make covers the whole night.

The restaurants sit on the Canary Wharf and Isle of Dogs pages, alongside the hotels closest to each. The desk answers at any hour through booking, and the fee for every length is on rates.