As with all night’s before there must be a morning after and, after two bars worth of cocktails the night before, the following morning surprisingly saw me awake bright and early and hangover free, even if my sniffly cold was making itself known.
After a morning spent alternately burying my head under the covers, drinking coffee, and writing, I dragged myself up, threw on my face and headed out into the city. I had a date with a gorgeous lady to go to.
We began, as all good morning’s after should, with alcohol, indulging in a couple of cocktails in Bar Termini in Soho. There’s something a it naughty about cocktails before noon. After a Bellini and a couple glasses of their Spritz Termini (Beefeater gin, rhubarb cordial, Aperol and Prosecco), we picked ourselves up and headed off to lunch.
Meat was on the menu. And lots of it.
The Blacklock is in a former basement brothel in Soho. As we entered the door on Windmill Street and wandered down the street we were welcome by blasts of 80s music – Human League, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode – less of the pop-y 80s, more of the moody, indie 80s. The bands who I’d have had an appreciation for had I been in my 30s in the 1980s instead of being 6.
Drinks, of course, came first. There are a goodly selection of cocktails for a fiver – the Nettle Gimlet, Hanky Panky and Aperol Negroni, alongside five that are a little more expensive at £7-7.50. For Northern Quarter prices, let alone Soho, they’re actually a bit of a bargain, and so we settled on sampling some of these with lunch.
The menu is limited, but in a good way. It’s not for veggies – the side dishes are deliciously veggie friendly, but the core of the menu, well, isn’t. As a woman who loves her meat, it’s heaven.
For a Thursday lunchtime there were lots of options – chop sandwich, selection of beef pork and lamb chops, and a steak or two, but at the urging of my date, we went all in. Three pre-chop bites, all of the days skinny chops on top of flatbread (so that the meat juices soak into it), and a side each. For £20 again, a bit of a bargain.
The pre-chop bites are morsels of flavour on rye crackers – three each in the case of our all in deal, and we were given a recommended order to eat them in – the flavours growing in intensity, from the rich pork lardo with ham, to the duck rillette with apple kimchi, the cheese and pickle with heavy rich blue cheese and finally egg anchovy and onion – my date’s favourite and it’s easy to see why. Each is rich, fatty, and gives your mouth a hint of the flavours to come.
Then the meat arrived.
Perhaps from a slightly different angle?
Resting on top of charred flatbread, seated firmly on an Eternal Beau plate (I swear someone in charge of this place had exactly the same childhood as me) was all the meat. Pork with crisp fat, lamb begging to be eaten off the bone – the biggest decision was where to start.
And then the sides started arriving.
You see we’d added a couple of extras alongside our two accompanying sides, and so the table got a little…. crowded.
10 hour ash smoked sweet potato – smoky, salty, sweet.
Crispy beef dripping chips (because we didn’t have enough carbs on the table).
Charred Little Gem lettuces – lettuce cooked is totally underrated, I know I’ve said that before, and I’ll say it again. Done right, it is a delicious thing.
Coal roasted beets and fresh grated horseradish – earthy, hint of astringent heat from the radish.
Blood orange and meat radish – the fennel and blood orange made this a fruity, crisp bowl of salad I’d happily eat on its own.
And possibly my favourite, charred apples, chicory and Stilton. The charring softened the bitterness of the chicory, and gave the apples a burnt sugar quality, add to that the creamy acidity of the cheese and spikes of flavour from the pomegranate. More places need to use their imagination and create salads and sides like this rather than bland piles of green leaves dressed in Balsamic and olive oil, or overdone broccoli.
PLEASE I’M BEGGING YOU – I WANT MORE SEXY SIDE DISHES.
Ahem.
To be honest, it’s no surprise this place is good. The idea is simple, yes – but simple is to put it bluntly, easy to fuck up. This manages to do it well (despite a little grumpiness experienced from one of the servers – we’ll put it down to her having a bad day) and then some. But with an ex-Hawksmoor chap at the helm, it could be argued, that the passion for well cooked (note, not well done) meat has it’s basis in a very good place. Either way, it’s a great site, it’s great food and drinks, and yes, we went a little overboard on the spend front, but my god it was worth it.
Though I kind of wish the walls could talk, because I expect they’ve seen some sights.
After eating our fill, and me wishing I’d brought tupperware with me for the train home, because we didn’t manage all the meat and I hate the thought of a lonely chop, we indulged in a final cocktail, this time from the drinks trolley, rather than dessert. Hell if there wasn’t room for one more chop, there was no room for pudding.
And finishing on an Old Fashioned is not a bad place to end.
Overall, I love this place – it’s unfussy, it’s unpretentious – though some would call it hipster, I really don’t care. If this is hipster, someone pass me a checked shirt and braces.
With thanks to Vicki for her company, to Blacklock for their food. This food was paid for at the venue.
OH MY DAYS. *Gets wallet out & runs our of house*