Blacklock Soho

Billing itself as a great value steak and chop house in central London, Blacklock’s on-trend feel and great food is definitely worth talking about, with the cool basement dining room becoming a well-known hot spot for West End diners on the prowl.

Blacklock’s incognito street entrance (be careful not to miss it) adds to the allure, although it won’t prepare you for the rocking basement room that is full to bursting with a garrulous young crowd. Vintage Blacklock foundry irons are used to press the likes of pork, lamb and beef chops on the charcoal grill, which also lends its smoky flavours to daily specials such as maple-cured bacon.

The most popular option on the menu though (and a favourite of ours) is Blacklock Soho’s all-in sharing option, which sees the day’s ‘skinny’ pork, beef and lamb chops piled onto strips of toasted flatbread which soak up the meat juices, with sides ranging from beef-dripping chips to courgettes with Doddington cheese. For £20 a head, this sharing-style feast is remarkably good value in this part of town and is a carnivore’s dream.

The fun list of cocktails is also a steal, with sips starting at just five pounds a pop. If you’re not a lover of Porn Star Martinis though, you can instead pick from a clutch of British beers and wines on tap. You can make a reservation if you wish, but Blacklock Soho keeps back a fair amount of tables for walk-ins. The gargantuan Sunday roast meanwhile is often hailed as one of the best in London and tables for this can be booked up months in advance.

Blacklock has gone on to achieve huge success on the capital’s dining scene, subsequently opening two further locations in the City and Shoreditch, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see more opening sometime soon.

The original Blacklock restaurant which has now led to various different branches in different area of London, Blacklock Soho still strives to provide the highest quality of meat to Londoners. Blacklock Soho manages to provide customers with the feeling of being in a classic chophouse with an added air of trendiness, meaning that it’s a great spot to visit with friends for a mid-week meat fix, or to tuck into one of London’s most impressive Sunday roasts at the weekend.

Located on Great Windmill Street, the restaurant is based underground; this means that as soon as you pass through the main entrance, you head down some stairs to the warehouse-like dining room. Long communal tables, which are dimly lit from above, stretch across the space, and on blackboards are scribbled the cuts of meat which are available that day.

The menu is a carnivore’s dream with every cut of beef, pork or lamb that you can imagine on offer, with their fantastic chops the headline act. If you can’t decide what to try, there’s the option to go all in for £20 per person and that gets you pre chop bites, followed by beef, pork, and lamb skinny chops, all served on top of a charcoal grilled flatbread, and a choice of sides. The sides on offer include wonderful beef dripping chips and barbecued baby gems.

On Sundays it’s all about their award-winning roast where you can also go all in, and have a pile of roast pork, lamb, chicken and beef served to your table, with all the trimmings you could possibly want, and of course a jug of thick gravy. Puddings include a thick cheesecake served at the table, as well as a classic bread and butter pudding.

A relatively short but sweet wine list is accompanied by a selection of brilliant house cocktails which cost just £5 each.