How can I contact the owners/management of the Aberdeen Angus Steakhouse chain (United Kingdom)?

Question

I would like to approach them about the bad quality food and service the offer in their restaurants here in London.

Answer 1

You're not the only one....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,360...

Flogging a dead cow

The Aberdeen Angus chain offers a timewarp British dining experience: rank wine, bad meat and vile veg. Maybe that's why it's closing down. Stuart Jeffries braves a steak

Thursday October 3, 2002

The Guardian

The signs are not propitious. Angus Steak House is an anagram of "Gosh! Nauseates UK". What's more, a Scottish colleague recalls how, when he arrived in London, he took his girlfriend there. She ate nothing and he was violently sick. Then there was the BBC fly-on-the-wall documentary last year that found mouse droppings in the gravy at London's Coventry Street branch. As I leave home, my partner passes a box of Rennies to me. "Do you really have to do this?" she asks, as if I am Gary Cooper in the last reel of High Noon. Which, in a sense, I am.

Article continues

But there is even worse news. The Aberdeen Steak House chain - of which the Angus Steak House is a confusingly named subsidiary - is going into receivership. This, in itself, may be a good thing, but for diners it is a terrifying development. If mouse droppings were served up when business was good, what might a resentful chef faced with looming redundancy add to my steak and chips now?

My dining partner and I stand outside the Coventry Street branch, daring each other inside. When I say dining partner, I mean photographer - no friend would accompany me. But then anyone who would join me on an unpaid basis would not be a friend for much longer: apart from that naive Scot, I know nobody who has eaten in an Aberdeen or Angus Steak House.

This is a key feature of what the menu describes as these "fine restaurants throughout the West End": no one who lives here would be seen in one. Who, then, eats there? Continentals confirming their prejudices about British food? Americans thinking these steak houses may approximate to those of their homeland? Depressives testing their Prozac?

We go to the nearby Leicester Square branch, where we hope the droppings quotient may be more acceptable. The smell of old f*g smoke from the red velour banquettes is the first thing we notice. Then the silence, the aching, cheerless silence.

Once seated by the window, I roll my eyes to the ceiling, a polished brass-effect affair that only reinforces the mood of claustrophbia."I'd run it as a chill-out lounge," says the photographer. "DJ in the corner, leather instead of velour." It could work.

Outside, the unmitigated foulness of Leicester Square keeps its counsel. We are at the epicentre of rip-off, tourist London. Couldn't we just run out now, dive into Chinatown and have a cheap, nutritious meal, he asks. No: stiff upper lip, I say.

The hunched, poignantly sad-eyed waitress approaches like an Eastern European homage to Julie Walters' Mrs Overall in Acorn Antiques. A cocktail perhaps? The laminated cocktail menu comes with handy illustrations. The picture of the Blue Hawaiian makes me remember that I should get some anti-freeze now the nights are drawing in. Perhaps not: something jaunty with an umbrella would only deepen our growing feelings of existential gloom.

A starter? The words "tomatoes stuffed with prawns" and "asparagus mayonnaise" put me off. I imagine a dead-eyed Czech, long into his second shift of the day, shoving half-defrosted shellfish into beef tomatoes. How about wine? There's Blue Nun (£12.60 a bottle) and Mateus Rosé (£12.80), but we opt for the Château Vieux Moulin De Roques (£15.60), a Saint Emilion with robust tannins proper to a Bordeaux, true, but one whose joylessly sharp attack would have made it undrinkable had I not needed a glass of something strong, and fast. A 750ml bottle of Perrier is another £4. We place our orders for steaks: two 10oz fillet steaks ( £14.60 each) and note that we have to order vegetables separately (French fries £2, onion rings £3.90).

I nearly go for Tournedos Rossini (£13.90), a grilled fillet steak served on a bed of non-specific pâté with red wine sauce, but decided against, fearing that the gravy may include things that only look like whole peppercorns. We are served with lovingly defrosted floury baps. Both have five parallel incisions bafflingly cut on top. They come free, which is just as well.

Our meals arrive. The inedible garnish of "crispy iceberg lettuce" is flattened as though it, rather than the steak, has been beaten with a tenderising hammer. The steak itself is dry and gristly. The chips, though golden, are watery, the onion rings pale and frightening. The wine remains unpleasant. The Perrier, though, slides down a treat.

Unaccountably, my dining partner starts talking about colonic irrigation and how, after a good course of that, one realises one's body is a temple. I am becoming very depressed and decide against Black Forest gâteau with obligatory whipped cream (£4) or indeed anything but the bill, which arrives pleasingly promptly.

The Aberdeen Steak House chain is a West End phenomenon, consisting of 16 Angus steak houses, six Aberdeen and one Highland steak house, two Maxine's Brasseries, three Pizza Pasta joints, an American Burger restaurant and that solecism, the American Café Bistro. The ghosts of a dead, aspirational culture haunt these bleak houses - one can imagine a time in the 70s when these places may have seemed, with their sumptuous decor and thick steaks, like top-class nosh. Today, they are anything but. Few British voices are heard here: instead the air is dominated by curt exchanges in bad English between the otherwise blameless Ukranian waitress and her polyglot clientele.

Now the owner Ali Shah, whose trade was clobbered first by the BSE crisis then the collapse in overseas (and especially American) tourism has decided to close down his chain. In its heyday, the chain sold 700,000 steaks a year and had an annual turnover of £20m. The over-worked waitress tells me the place is closing soon and that she will return to Kiev to continue her studies. I recall a meal I had there in the late-80s: a vegetarian special consisting of a plate of cool tinned peas. Kiev, she says, is now a more sophisticated place and vegetarian options no longer rudimentary. Things, you see, can get better. In Kiev as in London, eating out need not be a laughably depressing experience.

The bill, including the 90p cover charge per person and 10 % service charge comes to a scandalous £62.04. Once outside, we part with embarrassed downward glances, like two men who have done something shameful - the photographer to dive into a Chinese restaurant and cleanse his palate with jasmine tea, me to write this over a troubled stomach. Then perhaps a long shower, to get rid of the stench of failure. And maybe a course of colonic irrigation - just to be sure.

Answer 2

I believe it is owned by a man called Me Ali and is called Green Door steakhouse. There are a few franchises that are part of the group.

I would try phoning one of there resturants and pretending you want to highly praise them and ask for the owners contact information so that you can tell him of your wonderful dining experience.

They are more likely to give you the information if they think you are going to praise them.

Answer 3

You have a computer you have e.mail you know the company name. Go to it, give them a bollocking