As Jacques Chirac, one of the most underrated political leaders of the last half a century once observed, 'only Finland has a worse national cuisine than the English'. This is most apparent in our country’s attitude to steak. Even if you ask for it rare, in restaurants run by people influenced by our country’s poor excuse for a food culture, they invariably serve rock hard lumps of grey beef. The majority of steaks in this country might be pretty useful to fire at walls in demolition work – or as a heavy thing to throw if the Olympics want to do an outré version of the shot put – but that’s basically all they’d be good for.

CAU, the Argentinean restaurant on Bene't Street, is the antidote to the abominable English cooking of steak. For the main course I was presented with a 320g rib eye, the juiciness and succulence of which was veritably poetic. My friend Mossy was sitting opposite, and – for unfathomable reasons that could well be the last impenetrable frontier of pure mystery for science, long after a Grand Unified Theory has explained what now seem to be the impossibly enigmatic secrets of the universe – he opted to only get a starter, after having the £2 salad pot in Corpus Christi's hall. Consequently, when several other friends and I got our steaks, redolent as they were with the intoxicating smell of their sublime flavour, he looked mortified at missing out in favour of college rabbit food. He looked like someone had consigned him to a North Korean gulag for 50 years.

The steak tasted as good as it smelled. It came from a cow left to roam on the pampas – the huge grassy plains of Argentina – with seventeen varieties of grass on which to nosh. The chips were close to the simple ideal: crunchy on the outside, with a fluffy interior. Likewise, the peppercorn sauce had that essential quality rarely found in English restaurants: it actually tasted like pepper. Meanwhile, the wine selection was impressive: a variety of Argentinean wines were on offer; the trusty, established favourites of the old world were available as well. Being the incorrigible Francophile I am, I plumped for a Malbec from the Languedoc – a faultlessly elegant, smooth and mellow wine. I also appreciated the artsy newspaper-style wrapping in which the chips and (equally delectable) onion rings were served. While one could argue that this was nothing more than a pretentious superfluity (seeing as I just tipped them straight onto the plate with the steak), in its decorative effect it served a pleasant, if small, artistic effect. After all, as Oscar Wilde famously quipped as he glorified the unnecessary ornaments that help make life worthwhile: "all art is quite useless".

So why 4.5 stars instead of 5? The squid I had as a starter was mediocre. Outside the Mediterranean it is almost impossible to find squid with that distinctive but nebulous taste – similar to sweet but not quite sweet – which brings such delight to the palate, and comes from being fresh from the sea. Yet there was little flavour in the squid at all: the only taste in the dish was supplied by the (admittedly pleasing) combination of the salt and pepper seasoning and the chipotle mayo. Moreover, the music suddenly took a dive towards the end of the night. They started off playing South American tunes that seemed to express the exuberant soulfulness of the continent. But then they played the 1996 Babybird hit 'You're Gorgeous', a song which should stay where it belongs – in 1996, a year in which Charles and Diana were finalising their divorce and some people thought a buoyant Conservative Party under John Major would govern Britain into the 21st century.

But these are minor quibbles. My dinner at CAU cost me £40 and overall it was worth it. This was haute cuisine steak: a rare treat in this country.