Blacklock, Birmingham B3: ‘A very, very cool version of an Angus Steakhouse’ – restaurant review

Ever-open, eminently relatable, sensibly priced spots of this sort will always have an audience

A London chophouse has taken up residence on St Philip’s Place, Birmingham, on the edge of Cathedral Square, or “Pigeon Park”, as the locals call it. This particular nook of Brum city centre is a magnet to those feathered blighters, although Blacklock’s smoulderingly macho menu is ironically pigeon-meat free, revolving instead around heaps of chops and steaks cooked over charcoal. There’s porterhouse, bone-in sirloin, lamb rump and pig’s head on toast.

Launched in London in 2015, Blacklock was the elegant, edgy, no-nonsense dining experience for groovy young things who quite literally wanted meat and two veg, so long as said veg was dripping-fat chips; it now has five sites in the capital and another in Manchester. “We just ended up at Blacklock,” people used to tell me half a dozen times a week, then go on to rave about the bread, the gravy and the ash-baked sweet potatoes, and revel in the glorious simplicity of it all. Modern life was complex, Blacklock was not, but neither was it cheap enough to feel like a jaunt down the Toby Carvery. And now its big flavours and broad appeal have hit the UK’s second city.

It has rather brilliantly taken over the ground floor of St Philip’s House, a former Victorian vicarage. There’s masses of dark wood panelling stripped back to the original and, reportedly, a disused tunnel below, destination unclear. Another evil dimension, perhaps? Safe to say, Blacklock is a gothic gourmand’s paradise. It’s pretty hard to get a table round here, because it’s a magnet for tourists and Tinder dates, and the Ivy and Damascena on Temple Row and the nearby Pasture are always, always jam-packed. It’s a Monday night, and we feel lucky to get a walk-in, though Blacklock stresses that it officially welcomes them, and will happily put you up in the bar until your wishes can be granted. Blacklock Birmingham already feels much more fun than Blacklock London, because, let’s be honest, things are a lot less aloof north of Watford. Our server, a naughty, rollicking bundle of joy, tempts us with potted meat with kimchi, egg-and-anchovy bites and glasses of Westwell Pelegrim, an English sparkling from Kent. These bites are perfectly functional little affairs, if a bit dry, and leave me wishing I’d ordered the crayfish cocktail or the mushrooms on toast.

Next, a stainless-steel tureen heaped with lamb cutlets and lamb T-bones at £8 a chop turns up. It’s all very Tudor feasting, although erring more towards Elizabethan than the earlier Henry bit with all its weeping gangrene. The beef dripping chips are, without exaggeration, a total delight and come drizzled with garlic bone marrow. By this stage, not being an enormous meat eater (quite the contrary, in fact), I’m gasping for something with chlorophyll in it, and a crunchy, beautifully dressed broccoli and walnut salad hits the spot, as do those ash-roasted potatoes: crisp, sweet and mushy all at the same time. By 9pm, Blacklock is totally packed because ever-open, eminently relatable, sensibly priced spots of this sort will always have customers. There will always be a birthday, a leaving do, a special visitor in town, and the poor chump charged with booking a suitable table will at some point inevitably accept that fancy steak and hipster chips are probably the best solution. What’s more, today happens to be “butcher price Monday”, where every big chop is only £8 per 100g. That’s living alright. Blacklock stops just short of holding a Monday meat raffle, though it should probably go for it, because restaurants have perhaps gilded the lily for far too long with small plates and at-table soliloquies about the provenance of the prosciutto.

What we really, really wanted was a very, very cool version of an Angus Steakhouse, only without the neon-red signs and the in-window view of the leather banquettes so any passerby can watch you masticate your onion rings. And what I really, really want at the end of dinner is a choice of desserts with which to mainline sugar into my claggy arteries. At Blacklock, there are just two on my visit: white chocolate cheesecake with seasonal berries or a bowl of ice-cream.

We opt for the cheesecake, and it’s delivered in a china serving bowl to display largesse, before being plonked into our individual bowls with the promise of more if we want it. This is an old restaurant trick that I’ve seen a dozen times, but I fall for it every single go. Woo-hoo, free pudding! It’s a passable cheesecake, by the way, but it won’t trouble the in-house chefs at Costco. Even so, I loved every minute of my gossipy, fun time at Blacklock. In a bamboozling, high-concept world, this land of chops, chips and one choice of cheesecake is a balm for the senses.

Blacklock 4 St Philip’s Place, Birmingham B3, 0121-655 0211. Open Mon-Fri, lunch noon-3pm, dinner 5-9.30pm (10pm Thurs, 10.30pm Fri); Sat noon-10.30pm; Sun 11.45am-8pm. From about £40 a head à la carte; all-in sharing menu £28 a head, all plus drinks and service