The best lamb in London: Blacklock reviewed

Blacklock is the fourth restaurant of that name – there are others in Soho, Shoreditch and the City of London. It sits in a former royal coach-makers in an alley near the Garrick Club under signage that says ‘Chop’.

We descend to a cavern. The walls are exposed brick, the floors are dark wood, and the ceiling hangs over exposed pipework. There is a map of a more ancient and more interesting London on the wall, from the days in which chop houses were as common as raw sewage, or horses. It’s fiercely brown; committed to brown; washed with brown: chairs, tables, light fittings, food. There are tables of men looking expansive like Italian rugby fans. They love Blacklock for its brownness, its simplicity and its blood.

This is an honest place, a chop house: a specialist restaurant which gets its meat from Philip Warren & Son in Cornwall.