Please note, Blackfoot is now closed. Time Out Food & Drink editors, March 2016.
A pig's life isn't all wallowing in mud. Considered unclean by some cultures, they’re just too damn tasty to be taboo in all the others. It’s a wonder it’s taken this long for someone to open a London restaurant specialising in fabulously tasty pork dishes. At Blackfoot you can have pork cured, confit and roasted, as ribs, in a salad. Every way, that is, except bacon.
In some ways, this oversight of the obvious sums up Blackfoot. They do many things right, apart from some really basic things. For a start they’ve ignored some terrible acoustics.
Housed in the former Clark’s pie and mash shop on Exmouth Market, it’s no longer costermongers’ buttocks polishing the wooden booth seating. Now, people flag taxis from Islington to reach this austere, bare-boarded setting to eat, drink and be merry. Very merry indeed on the evening we visited. According to my phone app, the noise in the front room was averaging 85-90db. Or, to put it another way, about as loud as pigs being slaughtered. We asked to move to the back room, so we could hear our own conversation.
If you visit on a quieter evening, you’ll get the chance to enjoy some great dishes. Whipped lardo on sourdough toast was a treat of a starter, rich and unctuous. Italian-style porchetta was our favourite of the three main courses tried, simple but very effectively herby, and served with lentils and salsa verde. The side dishes were well-considered too, from the spicy pork scratchings to a fennel, orange and almond salad.
The slightly beleaguered staff – in between apologising for the cacophony emanating from the front room – did a champion job of ferrying dishes and lovely beers to the party-poopers through the back. We look forward to eating there again – just not to the squeals of over-refreshed diners at feeding time.