Sophie’s Steakhouse & Bar is the place to go for a meal to remember.

‘This place is blessed with space,’ smiles general manager Emily Sparling inside Sophie’s Steakhouse & Bar in Covent Garden, one of the West End’s most famous restaurants and a popular venue for watching this month’s Olympic Games (5-21 Aug). ‘We’ve got a big screen at one end of the restaurant which people can book to watch key events. The restaurant is big so people never wait long for a table. That’s our speciality.’ In fact, it’s just one of many specialities that Sophie’s has perfected over the years.

Surrounded by some of London’s greatest museums, shops and theatres, Sophie’s is the ideal spot for a leisurely lunch, pre-show dinner, late-night bite or well-crafted cocktail. Opened in 2008 by lifelong friends Sophie Bathgate and Rupert Power, the restaurant has become one of London’s finest steakhouses, offering succulent beef cuts alongside fresh fish, barbecue ribs, big salads, homemade desserts and a scrumptious kids’ menu. For Bathgate and Power, who set up their first steakhouse on Chelsea’s Fulham Road in 2002, the aim was simple: to create a female-friendly steakhouse with a focus on quality ingredients, value for money and fun.

‘I think a lot of people mistake us for a New York-style steakhouse,’ says Sparling, perhaps realising the similarities it has with US steakhouses such as Peter Luger in Brooklyn. ‘We like New York-style steakhouses but we’re all about British, locally-sourced food here, from our handpicked Cornish crab to the meat we get from Sophie’s family farm.’