First and foremost, please accept my apologies for how long it has taken me to post a new blog, guys! Mr.N has been complaining about the amount of time I’ve kept him in hibernation! Truth is that we were really busy with moving into our new place and on top of that I landed myself a new job which I started a few weeks ago. Woop! The great news for you guys is that my new office is close to the heart of London’s “foodie” scene, Soho! In due course I will be blogging about Polpo, Pizza Pigrims, Oka, Oliver Maki, to name a few. Now there will be no excuses for me not posting anything!

Lawyers love their external strategy meetings. It’s a great excuse for a cheeky afternoon away from the desk to dine in a restaurant followed by a lot of drinking late into the evening. To be fair, they don’t happen very often so you can’t blame us! Blacklock was the chosen restaurant on this particular day.

NOTE: If you’re a vegetarian this is not the place for you, for there are no other alternatives but meat, meat and more meat!

Blacklock was founded by three veterans of the Hawksmoor steakhouse group, so you know the quality of meat is up there with the best. The name hails from the Blacklock foundry in America’s south side, antique irons from which they use to press meat on the grill.

This little meat sanctuary is nestled firmly in Soho. Here’s a fun fact: it used to be an illegal strip club- *cue unsavoury jokes*. You wouldn’t ever guess looking at the place that it has such a “meaty” history. There is a metal staircase and downstairs there is a communal school bench-like table pushed together with raw planks. The music is cheesy 80s and 90s pop, and trust me, this gets your knee jerking away under the table.

As there were quite a few of us, we decided to go for the “All In”. We were treated to some pre-chop bites including cheese and pickle, duck rillette and apple kimchi, egg and anchovy canapés. The egg and anchovy was by far the tastiest.

A mountain of “skinny chops” all of a sudden appeared. There was very literally a high pile of beef short ribs, lamb cutlets, lamb neck, lamb T-bone, pork loin and pork ribs just stacked up on each other. Buried under all this meat was the juiciest and most incredible chargrilled flatbread that soaked up with all the meat juices!

We had a mixture of sides including beef dripping chips, 10 hour ash roasted sweet potato, kale and parmesan, blood orange and meat radish. Those 10 hours of roasting certainly paid off because those sweet spuds were seriously smokin’ good.

You won’t be disappointed by the cocktails served for a fiver each. Yes, you read that correct, £5! Perhaps the only place in London where you’ll get a £5 cocktail outside of the standard happy hours. Don’t get too excited, the choices are limited, but I didn’t mind my Grandma’s Spiked Lemonade.

If I’m being perfectly frank, although most of the chops were seasoned well and tasted fab, I do think there were a few chops which were overcooked. I felt like there was endless chewing at certain points, and a couple of my colleagues concurred on this. I also think that yes, the meats do have that distinct “real animal” flavour, but the danger with piling so many different meats altogether is that one chop starts tasting very similar to another very quickly. It’s still a good taste, don’t get me wrong.

At the end of our meal this guy came up to our table to see if we wanted any teas or coffees. Normal etiquette, right? Well, we thought so. We ordered our cappuccinos, hot chocolates etc. Ten minutes had passed by and we were still waiting. Were they still harvesting the coffee beans? All of a sudden this guy arrived back with all our drinks in take-away cups. Oh, I didn’t realise we had ordered to take-away. Ah, we hadn’t. What he had done was pop across the road to a trendy little espresso bar, Soho Grind, and grab us the drinks from there. Here’s what I don’t get: if you guys don’t have a coffee machine, why offer your diners coffee in the first place? Odd behaviour. We all looked slightly baffled, but drank our coffees nonetheless.

If you are someone who genuinely loves their meat without all the fuss and frills, this is worth a try. For £20 a head, the “All In” definitely gives you bang for your buck!

Food: 8.5/10  Atmosphere: 7.5/10  Value: 9/10

If this restaurant were a fictional character, it would be….Joey Tribbiani, Friends- known for his promiscuous past and an avid meat lover.

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