Attention to detail is everything at butcher-by-day, restaurant-by-night Hill and Szrok. With a space this tight and places this sparse, it needs to be.
Now in its tenth year on Broadway Market, it’s a calm, unpretentious space to sink into, all flickering candlelights and smartly designed surfaces that temper the room’s boisterous chatter, turning it into something of a soothing soundtrack. In the centre of the room, a single, stool-high dining table that in the day doubles as the butcher’s counter reminds you of where you are – if the certainly not unpleasant smell of hanging meat hadn’t already done that. If you’re not the sociable type (or you don’t want to share a single beef fat chip), then book one of the counters that form the circumference of the room.
Wherever you park your carcass, you’re in for a treat. From a taut, tabulated kitchen with just an induction, compact charcoal grill and combi, chef William Gleave, formerly of P. Franco and Bright, coaxes the very best out of close-to-hand, carefully reared, hung and butchered ingredients, with a myopic, masterful vision of just how plates in such a hybrid space should look, taste and, interestingly, cost.
Prices on both sides of the Hill and Szrok operation are incredibly good value. In their own words, “We buy direct from farms by cutting out the middleman so we can provide the very best quality, the very best cuts with clear provenance and still keep prices reasonable.”
This is apparent in huge slabs of premium beef that would cost double – triple, even – a little further into town.
They go on; “All our butchers’ staff are run through an apprentice scheme, giving local lads an opportunity to learn the trade, and bring a modern hand to a traditional trade.”
It’s a lovely touch; those butchers also make up some of the waitstaff each evening, furthering that connection between the two sides of the business, and able to talk you through the menu about which cuts, breeds, and preparations are particularly good right now. The twinkle in our waiter’s eye as he described a humble dish of cabbage stuffed with duck gizzards and chestnuts told us us we needed to know that it was an essential order.
Items are crossed off the day-and-dated menu with others scrawled on in replacement. It’s reassuring knowing that the kitchen are simply cooking what’s good on the day, and this cabbage number was a late addition to the line-up.
We were soon grateful for reading too much into that twinkle; that cabbage came wrapped around a tangle of braised offal like a cannellini, its accompanying cream sauce getting richer and deeper once you’d cut through the cabbage and its guts had spilled out. Reminiscent of peppercorn sauce, by the end that sauce was several shades darker, with a rasping heat and back-kick of the farmyard.
Soused sardine soldiers (just £4 for two), were a refreshing counterpoint. Served hidden under a fridge cold slab of tomato (the chill usually a sin – not so here) and atop a thin slice of warmed treacle soda bread, the interplay between hot and cold, sweet and sour, was so well thought out and satisfying.
With a couple of other appealing small plates on offer, including house beef sobrasada on toast and grilled sweetcorn with spiced honey, you could conceivably come to Hill and Szrok and eat very well without ever venturing into the headlining, heavy-hitting section of the menu, the one where words like ‘collar’, ‘chop’, ‘rib’ and ‘rump’ begin to proliferate.
But to do so would be insanity, because this is quite simply the finest meat cookery in the capital right now.
We went for a Lincoln Red wing rib, keenly priced at £50 for a hulking, heaving 550g piece that could have fed four, each thick and blushing slice blessed with cartoonishly perfect bark, and almost a single steak in itself. We took a couple of slices away – neatly wrapped in butcher’s paper and twine – with the noble intention of having a steak sarnie in the morning. We couldn’t resist wolfing it down on the short train ride home.
Anyway, its bank of fat – dutifully rendered of course – tasted sweet and mellow, with none of that unabating blue-cheesiness that comes with a retired dairy cow’s ubiquity.
Indeed, it was clear this guy hadn’t been excessively hung, with flesh that was perfectly tender, sure, but also fresh and essential tasting, tight and satisfying to chew. All too often, the current restaurant scene’s dedication to extreme ageing results in steak with a loose, wooly mouthfeel that isn’t – quite simply – all that pleasant. Real care had gone into the development of this wing rib’s texture and flavour, and it made eating it all the more enjoyable.
Back to that attention to detail; it was good to have a salt shaker on the table here. The way the meat was cooked and presented meant it did need a flake or two on each slice to bring it to conclusion. And sometimes, you do need that final twist at the table to truly make the steak your own.
It comes dressed in a glossy Madeira jus that you could genuinely do your hair in. It’s an absolute lip-smacker, tasting of concentrated resting juices and just a little sweetness and acidity, but never too much to interrupt the pastoral flavours of the beef itself. A little sun of English mustard brightened up the plate and offered a sense of place.
Just like everyone else, we’re sick of stodgy, dry triple cooked chips, once considered a culinary innovation are now bordering on passé, so the Burger King-adjacent beef fat chips were just the ticket. These beautiful batons were so satisfying to squash into the last remnants of those meat juices and jus with the back of a fork.
A sweet, vegetal side of peas and lettuce, braised until a homogenous unit, and a simple, piquant tomato salad, was all the spread required to see it on its way in surprisingly refreshing fashion. Plus a second order of those chips, of course.
After a meal that felt like a pitch perfect expression of seasonal British steakhouse (is that even a genre?) a chilled rice pudding with mango and jara lime felt like something of an outlier, but god it worked, the kitchen clearly having a little fun and flexing their creativity after such a measured performance with the mains.
Creamy, fragrant and perfumed with cardamom pods, it felt like an inspired take on a mango kheer, that classic scented Indian pudding, with flourishes of classic Thai streetside sweet treats thrown in for good measure. Yep, if kheer and mango sticky rice had a baby, this would be it.
The wine list at Hill and Szrok offers flashes of great value, too, with a handful of largely low intervention wines sold by the glass. That said, we went for a bottle of Azul y Garanza Tres Tinto, an easy drinking organic red with notes of black pepper and cherry. That ‘tres’ in the title refers to the blend, broadly Tempranillo with a splash of Grenache and an unidentifiable third grape – we’ll leave that to the experts.
We were told this guy is made in concrete, and takes on a kind of myopic complexity due to it not having been aged in oak or other vessels that impart flavour, instead letting the quality of the raw material shine through.
Anyway, it was beautiful with that beef. At £37 a bottle, you’d hope it would be, but considering this guy retails at £16, the mark-up feels modest and the value excellent for a semi-central London restaurant. Zooming out, and the whole bill came to ‘just’ £150, of which a third of it was drinks. For a meal of this unvarnished quality, that genuinely didn’t feel too painful on the wallet.
Anyway, before leaving head down to the toilet (must stop just going for the sake of it – my bladder’s fucked), and that sense of place hits you again. There are photos of the butchers sitting amongst carcasses adorning the walls, and on the ground floor, hanging rooms gently buzz, bringing you back once again to where you are, and to the layers of craftsmanship that’s gone into the meal you’ve just enjoyed.
It’s a dining experience that really does feel controlled, confident, beautifully paced and brilliantly managed. London Fields is lucky to have Hill and Szrok.
Website: hillandszrok.com
Address: 60 Broadway Market, London E8 4QJ