A restaurant has been criticised for offering a smaller steak specifically for women on their menu. The fillet steak which has been entitled ‘ladies fillet’ on the menu, is just 8oz, making it the smallest steak on offer, and has prompted a flurry of complaints online over the unnecessary gendering of the meat.
On its menu, Manhattan Bar and Grill in Liverpool describes the steak as ‘One for the ladies. A beautiful 80 cut, cause we can…’ and food writer Vicky Andrews was quick to notice the bizarrely gendered dish, posting a screenshot on her twitter.
In her tweet she wrote “would you order a ‘ladies fillet’?” before tagging a number of big names in the food industry including Angela Hartnett and Jay Rayner. Unsurprisingly, people weren’t best pleased about the smaller steak, which appears to suggest that women ought to eat less, with one user describing it as “a whole new level of sexism”.
Meanwhile food critic Jay Rayner responded to the tweet saying: “Courtesy of the Manhattan Bar and Grill, Liverpool: a fillet for the laydeez. Because... I mean.. but...” whereas chef Angela Hartnett simply replied “OMG”.
When Manhattan Bar and Grill was asked for comment about the unnecessarily gendered dish by METRO, it responded saying: “We’ve had this steak on the menu since day one and due to high demand from a lot of our female customers, we named it, the Ladies Fillet. It’s a very, very popular dish and one of our bestselling steaks from the Grill section.”
It then went on to say that it wouldn’t be changing the name of the dish, saying “why change something that works?”
This all comes at a point where sexism is still a huge issue in the food and restaurant industry. Chef Marco Pierre White was recently accused of making sexist comments about women in restaurant kitchens.