Dining Out 016: Blacklock
Lunch in Covent Garden.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. England got to the Euros final, England got beat in the Euros final.
Before that especially gnarly few minutes after Spain scored their second and everyone just sort of went weird and quiet in the pub, it had been fun to consider that there was a world in which this team might actually win, where entire pubs’ worth of people would pour into the street screaming, because that’s all they’d be capable of, operating on pure electric delight and the shock of seeing Roy Keane go quite that red in the face. It didn’t happen of course, but I had a fun day up until that point wondering – believing? – that it might.
The day in question began, of course, with the only thing there really was for it*: a Sunday roast. This is the first time I have ever written about a roast in Dining Out, and it’s probably the only time I ever will, because as I have stated repeatedly, I don’t actually like them that much. But I think that the restaurant I went to – the Covent Garden branch of Blacklock – is worth chatting about, and I enjoyed the food, so I am making a bit of an exception.
I am something of a latecomer to Blacklock, the small chain of London chop houses, inspired by your Hawksmoors and your Quality Chops, which began life in 2015 with a Soho restaurant. They now have five London spots and will soon also be opening a branch in Manchester. I really like what Blacklock do and how they operate. Their food is genuinely affordable (a huge beef roast, for example, is £25), and they are excellent at hospitality.
They add special touches – little extras: a pork scratching here; a slice of cheesecake there – that make you feel like you’re being paid attention to, and in turn, you remember that feeling and, as per everyone I know who is a convert, you go back to feel it again and again. I went for the first time only a few weeks ago, to try their newest cull yaw dish – ribs from mutton essentially given a five star retirement by farmer Matt Chatfield, which are absolutely phenomenal, lent so much flavour by a decadent racing strip of fat – and liked it so much that I headed back last weekend for a roast.
The interior of the Covent Garden outpost of Blacklock is windowless and very wood-panelled, though the relative darkness does offer a nice ambience (so that even if, like me, you have opted to eat a roast, on an actually quite boiling Sunday, you don’t feel as though that’s the case, which is probably a good thing), and the food is served on crockery that looks like it has been liberated from the kitchens of a load of nans, in that contemporary English chop house style, which I am fond of.
The options for the roast are beef, lamb, pork or “cauliflower steak”, (and if you are choosing anything but beef from that roster, you are, my friend, an idiot), though we did end up opting for sirloin meat rather than the sliced rump that comes as standard.
Roasts are served with gravy and “trimmings” (why do they call it this?), and once we’d selected the meat, we kind of just let the roast happen to us – although in amongst the ordering I did also end up with a baby pink Watermelon Margarita, garnished with a slice of fruit that had been soaked in mezcal, and delivered in a glass with a hot pink salt rim. It reminded me of the kind of novelty drink you get in an all-inclusive hotel, and the Barbie Dreamhouse contrast to both the surroundings and the food made me laugh.
The only way I can describe the way the roasts themselves came out of the kitchen was: “Tudor”. Rare sirloin steaks were draped over Yorkshire puddings you could feasibly have drunk pints out of, beneath which were big hunks of roast potato, charred carrots and rich cabbage. It was what I would call “Henry VIII”-core – the sort of meal you’d eat before going to absolutely batter someone in a joust or something, which of course is basically the same thing as “going to the pub to sit down for hours and then shout at Harry Kane on the television”.
I am reasonably critical of roasts in general, and some elements of the plate weren’t my favourite, admittedly. The sirloin was obviously very fine, but in practice it was both too thick and too rare when there was so much else going on, and the veg felt sidelined a little, though the carrots had that good good honey-style glaze that I do enjoy.
Elsewhere, though, success: the backbone of any Sunday roast is the roast potato, and I am happy to say that Blacklock have them down. They are golden and resistant on the outside, and soft and nicely powdery inside, with the buttery taste you are looking for. And then there is the Yorkshire pudding.
I’m not a patriotic person – it is largely very difficult to be, let’s face it – but there is some English stuff that is indisputably class. The way Bukayo Saka moves the football across his own body, for example, makes me feel as though there might be some good things about this place. When I see him do that, I feel the same as I did when I first heard Jay from Geordie Shore declaring his love for a woman by announcing, “She’s got it all: arse, tits, banter”, or when Gemma Collins told the American Tiffany Pollard on Celebrity Big Brother that over here, asking someone “Can I make you a tea?” is like saying to them: “Can I give you a grand?”
England is not a good country but it is a funny and inventive one occasionally. Another thing that convinces me of this is the sheer concept of “Yorkshire pudding”, and the Blacklock one is magic.
A Yorkie is a wonderful thing because its major use is simply indulgence, and Blacklock understand this. Firstly, their YP is enormous, which is crucial. You can reasonably hold it in two hands. I started off eating it politely, chopping bits off with my knife and fork, but soon I was ripping into it with my bare paws, crunching the top and tearing the middle. “Not a roast fan but this is class,” I thought, as I started pulling off chunks of the batter to dip directly into the gravy boat (and that gravy, by the way, is rich and deep as you’d expect from a place whose speciality is meat), experiencing a touch-and-go moment with my all-white outfit in the process.
It took a while for us to get through so much food, but even though it was Sunday, we weren’t rushed or made to feel like the table was needed back. Even so, though, we skipped dessert, settled up, and briefly headed out into central London (I’m going to need a t-shirt or commemorative tea towel or something that says “I saw the lad who climbed up the scaffolding outside the Leicester Square Odeon before the Euros final 14/07/2024” ASAP). Then, we headed to the pub to partake in the national pastime of getting progressively more and more rattled before the game even started.
England did not win, as you know, but look: there is lots of shit here – too much sometimes – but it does also remain the country of the Blacklock Yorkshire pudding and Jack Grealish in the blond wig. Things may not be totally washed just yet.
* i.e. when you’re allowed to stand on the chairs in the pub.
** I would actually say there were probably two things for it – the other one being a fry-up – but a roast felt more in the spirit of the occasion.
This visit was discounted by Blacklock.
Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill and illustrated by Lucy Letherland. Weekly reviews are free to read every Thursday, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 a month or £50 a year, to get extra content every second Sunday.
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