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Branches of restaurants that open in the banker haven that is the City of London do not, as a rule, make you want to yell: ‘Sweet Jesus those are reasonable prices!’ Well, unless by ‘reasonable’, you mean ‘wallet-murderingly nightmarish’.
So as soon as you sit down in the second opening from Blacklock – the trendy take on a British chop house that’s won shedloads of plaudits for its Soho branch – it’s hard not to like the place. There’s a range of cocktails for a fiver each, a set menu for £20 per head and top quality chops of meat for four quid a pop. The vibe is relaxed and cool: the post-industrial vibe of the basement features Nike Air-clad staff handjiving with each other to the funky background music. Plus there’s silly touches like meat-based puns scrawled on mirrors in lipstick (which is cute even if we’re not sure anyone wants to look at a face that’s so covered in meat grease you could roll a tallow candle on it). It’s laidback, fun and buzzy.
The food is also great. The melty, crusted beef is a real highlight, and while side dishes sound like plates you’d expect to find on a list of ‘Things You’d Only Barbecue If You’re A Crackpot’ (think: chicory, baby gem lettuce), they turn out to be smoky things of beauty. The downsides? A bread and butter pudding that was so lacking in cream it could have been a pannetone they’d crisped up in the oven, and a waitress who occasionally (occasionally) tipped over from casual into slightly overfamiliar (‘Hi there sweet things!’)
But in truth, there’s not a lot wrong with this place. It’s almost too cool, too affordable for sharp-suited expense-account crowd. But for those of us actually paying for ourselves, it’s pretty damn great.