Blacklock

A Soho Basement and the Logic of the Chop

Descend the stairs at 24 Great Windmill Street and you arrive in a room that has been, across its lifetime, several things London is better known for than fine dining. The current incarnation keeps the low ceilings and the sense of mild secrecy but replaces whatever came before with dark panelling, parquet floors, and bare wooden tables arranged for sharing. The atmosphere sits somewhere between a Victorian chophouse and a neighbourhood pub that takes its meat seriously — which is, roughly speaking, exactly what Blacklock intends.

London's chophouse tradition goes back centuries. The city once had dozens of them, sawdust-floored rooms where cuts were priced by weight and the wine list was short. Most disappeared during the 20th century's shift toward continental dining, and the few survivors calcified into tourist landmarks. What Blacklock does — across several London sites, with this Soho original as the flagship , is resurrect the format without the museum quality. The result is a dining room that feels both historically grounded and genuinely in use.

The Cut: What Arrives on the Grill

The menu is built around cuts rather than courses, and understanding that structure is the key to ordering well. The headline proteins are lamb T-bones, pork ribs, and bone-in sirloins, all sourced from Philip Warren's farm in Cornwall. Warren is one of the more respected names in British butchery, known for naturally reared, grass-fed stock , a provenance model that positions Blacklock at a meaningful distance from the bulk-supply steakhouse chains that occupied this price tier through the 1990s and 2000s.

The venue's name itself signals the cooking method: the vintage Blacklock cast-iron skillets used on the grill impart a heat retention and sear quality that lighter modern pans cannot replicate. Cast iron's ability to maintain consistent temperature across the cooking surface matters particularly for thinner cuts, where the margin between correctly seared and overcooked is narrow. The 'skinny chops' that anchor the menu benefit directly from this.

For those coming in a group, the £27 'all in' offer is the structural choice: three meats (beef, pork, and lamb) piled onto herb-flecked chargrilled flatbreads, with accompaniments included. It is a format that encourages sharing rather than individual plate-guarding, and at that price point it sits well below the per-head cost at the formal steakhouse tier. Compare Blacklock's positioning to Goodman, which operates in a more traditional premium steakhouse register with aged cuts, leather banquettes, and pricing to match. Blacklock is making a different argument: that the chophouse model, done with care, delivers more pleasure per pound than the formal steakhouse ever did.

At lunch, the menu compresses to burgers and steak sandwiches. Sunday shifts to a sell-out roast format, which books up in advance and represents a distinct enough offering that it functions almost as a separate dining occasion from the weeknight chop programme.

The Supporting Cast

The sides and pre-chop bites at Blacklock carry more editorial weight than most restaurant supporting acts. Sweet potatoes roasted in ash for ten hours arrive with a depth of flavour that the oven-roasted version never achieves; the Maillard reaction at the surface gives way to a smoky, collapsed interior. Potted meats with kimchi as a pre-chop bite signal a kitchen that is aware of current fermentation trends without forcing them onto the main event. Chilli hollandaise and garlic marrow spread extend the richness of the meat course rather than competing with it.

The Blacklock gravy, served in old-fashioned gravy boats, has acquired genuine word-of-mouth status in London food circles. It is the kind of detail that distinguishes a restaurant serious about its own logic from one that treats the secondary elements as afterthoughts. The gravy boats are also, practically, the most useful piece of table theatre in the room.

Drinks: The Trolley and the Tap

Cocktail trolley is a practical piece of theatre that also solves a common group-dining problem: getting everyone's first drink without the table descending into a round-ordering negotiation. Own-label beers and wines, several available on tap, keep the drinks bill proportionate to the food prices. The wine list skews short and affordable, which is consistent with the chophouse model rather than an oversight.

Where Blacklock Sits in the London Eating Scene

London's current restaurant spectrum runs from neighbourhood bistros at one end to the formal tasting-menu rooms at the other. The latter category includes the likes of CORE by Clare Smyth, The Ledbury, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, and Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library , rooms where the service, sourcing, and price all occupy a different register. Blacklock is not competing with those addresses. It is making the case for a middle tier that takes provenance as seriously as fine dining but delivers it without the ceremony.

Opinionated About Dining, one of the more data-rigorous casual dining ranking systems in Europe, has tracked Blacklock's Soho site over three consecutive years: Recommended in 2023, ranked 401st in Casual Europe in 2024, and 582nd in 2025. Movement on such rankings is not always directionally simple , the 2025 number reflects a larger field rather than a drop in quality , but sustained presence across three cycles confirms a consistency that one-year appearances on 'hot' lists do not. A Google rating of 4.8 across 547 reviews reinforces that signal from a different data source.

For visitors mapping London beyond the tasting-menu tier, the wider context is worth noting. The UK's fine dining geography includes The Fat Duck in Bray, L'Enclume in Cartmel, Moor Hall in Aughton, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, Hand and Flowers in Marlow, and Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons , all requiring separate trips outside the city. Within London, Blacklock occupies a tier that requires no such planning: it is a Soho room that takes the same provenance logic as those destination addresses and applies it to a format built around informality and sharing.

For a broader view of eating and drinking in the city, see our full London restaurants guide, our full London bars guide, our full London hotels guide, our full London wineries guide, and our full London experiences guide. For comparison beyond the UK, the steakhouse format plays out differently at A Cut in Taipei and Capa in Orlando.

What should I order at Blacklock?

The £27 all-in sharing offer covers beef, pork, and lamb served on chargrilled flatbreads with accompaniments; for groups, it is the most efficient way to sample the range. If ordering individually, the bone-in sirloin and lamb T-bone represent the core of what the Philip Warren sourcing and cast-iron cooking method are designed to show. The Blacklock gravy is not optional. Ash-roasted sweet potatoes take ten hours in preparation and are worth ordering alongside any cut. On Sundays, the roast format replaces the standard menu; on weekday lunchtimes, burgers and steak sandwiches take over , a separate, shorter proposition from the evening chop programme.