555. Summer At Blacklock.

  It has been three months since I last visited Blacklock in St Philip’s Square and I was visiting the city centre it seemed like a good time to return and see if the restaurant had now settled into being a good and pleasing place to enjoy assault and tasty dinner. 

  Many of the tables were not taken, it being a Friday lunchtime and that nearest me was taken by four noisy men which was not a pleasure. The restaurant is spacious and the tables are not closely spaced which is pleasing but the high ceiling allows noise to reverberate and expand to fill the space available.

  I started with a dish which had previously given me a lot of pleasure - the crayfish cocktail served with two slices of excellent toasted sourdough. The cocktail got off to a good start - the little crayfish were nicely textured and the Marie Rose was paprika hot on the mid tongue and back of the palate which was very exciting. I was advised that the best way to eat the dish was to tip it out on to the plate wbich sounded all rather inelegant to me (and so I chose not to do so) but may it have been wise to obey instructions given that the crayfish inhabited the top of the dish in which they were served and beneath lay a surfeit of avocado, to which God had given minimal flavour when he created it, and the chef realising that fact had oversalted the dull and wretched fruit. 

  I moved on to another previous favourite - the pork loin chop, beef fat chips and ‘summer slaw’. The chop was very good, pink but well cooked and decently tender and tasty. The ‘summer slaw’ had some flavour but was not really very interesting and was hard to bother with but the chips cooked in beef fat proved to be the highlight of the course - crispy and tasty.

   The dessert choice is very limited and I therefore once more had the white chocolate deconstructed cheese cake which was generously portioned and very pleasurable in both flavour and, even more so, in texture.

  It’s a large and lively and quite noisy restaurant. Diners seem to be there to eat rather than to dine and so Blacklock achieves its goal in feeding them and making them happy. It’s not a place one can keep returning to because the menu is unchanging and you can only have so much of a good thing before boredom sets in.

7 August 2026

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛