I love a bargain (being a tight arsed git – Mrs. SF’s words not mine) and a flying visit to London required something not too pricey to assuage the cost of transport up there. With the visit to see my father (with other family members – making 8 of us in all) it was imperative to get the wine sorted. My old man doesn’t tend to drink cheap stuff and buying anything even remotely drinkable let alone good in a restaurant can increase the cost rather dramatically. As I and he both have substantial stores of wine, the obvious option was somewhere that applied a reasonable corkage charge.

On my last (wine centric) trip to London I had (unsuccessfully) lobbied for lunch on the Friday at one of Blacklock’s London outlets which do an very reasonable every day corkage offer of £10 and I noted on Mondays they also offer a discount (Butcher’s prices) on their big chops (per 100g beef and lamb steaks). As such it offered a double whammy on the value front and, based on a previous visit by me to their Soho branch, the food is pretty good.

I, therefore, booked their Shoreditch branch for 8 of us. Amazingly they didn’t required credit card details, which is almost unheard of in these (low trust) days!

The menu is pretty (almost exclusively) meat orientated, with one lone main course veggie option (pretty pointless if you ask me)

and it is always nice to see lamb (all to often priced akin to gold these days) rump on a menu at a seemingly very reasonable price.

With the Big Chop Monday offer, all chops on the board are at discounted rates and the lamb rump was seemingly a bit of a bargain at £37.50 for a 500g piece

I really fancied the lamb, but it seemed that others (who ordered a fraction before us) had the same idea and by the time we got to ordering the last piece of lamb had gone. After a short period of sulking, I  defaulted to a 550g bone in sirloin (I shared this with my brother in law and immediately called dips on the bone, to which he acquiesced to far too easily).

Very tasty bit of beef this, with a nice char to the exterior and a ruby red (medium rare) interior. No skimping on the fat (and as we all know, where there is fat there is flavour). I happily chewed on the bone at the end as the table looked in in mild disgust.

Sides wise I ordered beef dripping fries (£5) to share,

which had that sort after crisp exterior and soft fluffy interior and a distinct flavour of beef fat (never a bad thing). In hindsight one portion between two wasn’t enough, but one each would have been a tad excessive  Maybe 2 between 3 would work best, if numbers permit.

Others sides order included grilled baby gem with an anchovy dripping topping and kale and parmesan. Both very good (no pictures am afraid), with the umami hit from the anchovy in the baby gem number resulting in it shading the kale.

A denver steak, at a very reasonable £15,

was a good size for the price. It was very tender, with a good flavour despite the lack of much/any fat. Bit of a bargain, I would say.

Other (more pricey) steaks,

included a 350g rib eye. Again good crust, requested ruby red interior and a very good flavour that comes with dry ageing. A “not off the board” sirloin steak was a good size for its £21 price tag.

My father doesn’t eat that much these days and the small(er) chop selection was ideal for him and his partner to share.

They went for pork and lamb (£8 a pop) and, as with the bigger the beef chops, these were well flavoured and tender.

We ordered an array of sauces, with the Blacklock gravy the pick of the bunch.

On the booze front, as mentioned earlier all Blacklock’s various outlets offer an across the board all week £10 corkage change if you bring you own bottles which saved us a mint.

We started off with an Aussie Cab Sauv in the form of a Tahblik 2016.

Black fruits and a touch of mintiness, it till felt a touch young with a fair bit of grippiness. Benefited from being drunk with the food and maybe needed a bit more aeration (i e. a decant, which logistics made difficult)

We then had a trio of Northern Rhone  Syrahs.

To my mind the Les Lezardes from Rene Rostaing (from the chronically underrated  Collines Rhodaniennes IPG – just across the river from the far more illustrious Coté Rote- where good value wines can still be found) bested the two Croze Hermitage wines.

Sweet black fruits and some tertiary meaty note, with black pepper and cured meats on the finish. Still young, but already very drinkable and great with a big steak.

We finished off proceedings with a rather good old school bread and butter pudding and custard (£8) . No pics of that, but it was a  very good old school dessert.

Verdict

A double bubble bargain, with the very reasonable corkage and Monday Butcher’s block discount on the food made for a easy on the wallet way for us to take my father and his partner out for dinner. 

We paid, all in, midgen under £320 for eight people.

This got us loads of food and 4 bottles of wine (we obviously had to buy the wine, but the cost of those was long since sunk) and £41.25 for a 550g piece of bone in sirloin seemed to me to be pretty good value.

It made for a very pleasant Monday and I   see that Blacklock are spreading their wings and opening up outside of London (in Birmingham) and, with this sort of deal, I really hope that they open up in Cardiff (it is certainly far better than Gaucho in my humble opinion)

If you have time to kill, before or after, the rather hidden away Shoreditch Wine House offers some rather interesting stuff by the glass and bottle.

I had a glass of Baden (German) Chardonnay and a glass of an Pico (in the Azores) Arinto as our various disparate elements coalesced before we made our way to Blacklock and very nice they were too.

They also sell wines to take out, with the link below giving details of just a sample of the wines on offer,

https://shoreditchwinehouse.co.uk/collections/all

so perfect not only for a snifter but also if you haven’t already got a bottle for Blacklock.

On the point of corkage, options in Cardiff seem to be quite limited (with the Cardiff Wine Buyers Club always on the look out for places offering reasonable corkage in Cardiff). I have seen places offering corkage at £45 a bottle (£90 for a magnum), which is frankly outrageous (surely it is easier to just say “we don’t do corkage“, as effect is the same).

Last time out, with the Cardiff Wine Buyers Club,

we were charged a higher corkage fee for the red bottles than the white ones which made no sense to me at all.

A place doing a Blacklock level corkage offering in Cardiff would have us in for dinners a lot I think. Pasture seems to offer the best current corkage deal in the city centre at the moment (£20 per bottle, £25 for a magnum I believe) and thus the next Cardiff Wine Buyers Club outing is likely to be there.

The details

Address: Shoreditch branch  –  28-30 Rivington St, London EC2A 3DZ

Website: https://theblacklock.com/restaurants/shoreditch/?utm_source=SHOREDITCH_GMB&utm_medium=GMB