A steak restaurant in Liverpool has launched a ‘ladies fillet’ because they say that their female diners struggle to eat the larger cuts.

The steak “is for the ladies” boasts the menu of the Manhattan Bar & Grill on Fenwick Street, which offers a cheaper, smaller, fillet for women.

The restaurant said that they had introduced the 8oz steaks after they received “countless queries” from female visitors and hen parties asking if they had anything smaller than their classic 10oz fat free version.

But some people have criticised the restaurant and said that the gendered menu is sexist.

Managing Director of Manhattan Bar & Grill, Karl Hassan, said the restaurant was simply responding to demand.

He said: “We have a lot of hen parties and female visitors to our bar and grill, and we had countless queries that our 10oz fillet steaks are far too big.

“So we aptly got our supplier to send us 8oz instead and named them “Ladies 8oz Fillets!”

He said that the introduction of the item to the menu had “gone down really well at our restaurant” especially as the cost of the 2oz lighter steak was roughly 30 per cent cheaper.

He added they even get men asking for the "ladies fillet" although he said this “is often ridiculed by the other men in male parties, but in good humour and spirits.”

Others were less enamoured with the title of the dish.

Oisín Rogers who runs The Guinea Grill in Mayfair, which was Frank Sinatra's favourite steakhouse, was quick to prove that gender doesn’t define consumption limits.

"We had a very, very elegant and knowledgeable woman over from Provence two weeks ago and she ate a 1kg cote de bouf on her own and she was delighted with it and shook my hand on the way out,” he said.