"London is filled with restaurants of all cuisines you can find everything from thai and indian through to ethiopian or moroccan but sometimes you just can't beat a bit of British. British cooking to me means one thing. Meat. I love big, comforting plates of honest food whether that comes in the form of beef, pork, lamb or chicken. I'm a meat veg girl through and through so when I was recently invited down to The Grill on the Market, near Smithfields market one look at the menu and I knew I'd love it. Grill on the Market is a restaurant from the Blackhouse group. They've got restaurants across the country in Chester, Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester and the site at Smithfeilds market is its only London outpost. Blackhouse are all about no nonsense, honest and simple cooking and that's exactly what they serve up. We wanted to make sure we tried as much of the menu as possible so we ordered the Blackhouse Sharing Plate £15.75) which allows you to try four starter dishes for a very reasonable price. Honey glazed chicken skewers, salt and pepper calamari, BBQ ribs and baked sweet potato wedges. All served withthree dips BBQ, Aioli and a mint coriander creme fraiche. The ribs had that perfect fall off the bone, melt in the mouth texture and the calamari oh the calamari.... Squid has a tendency to be cooked to the point of tasting like rubber in lots of places but GoTM got it just right. Perfectly cooked in a light batter which sung when dunked in the garlic y mayonnaise. I also spied Scottish mussels on the menu and couldn't resist ordering a bowl to share I'm greedy, remember people). There's a choice of two sauces so we went with the cream and white wine option £7.75) which was gorgeous if a touch under seasoned, but a good squeeze from the lemon provided on our sharing platter totally took it up a gear. Make sure you order some bread as the sauce is just dying to be mopped up once you've eaten the mussels. I even drained the whole bowl with a spoon once the bread was gone... For main courses we both went for rib eyes. Rib eye steak is by far my favourite cut it's covered in fatty marbling which creates a rich, beefy flavour. This cut of steak is best medium rare as it allows the fat to melt slightly and all the flavour to be absorbed when cooked right, it tastes incredible. All the steaks at Grill on the Market are served with a choice of baked potato, home cut chips or mash. We both very predictably went for steak and home cut chips because diets are not designed for date night. Tom kept it fancy by adding a skewer of garlic king prawns £5) to go with his steak and I chose a Béarnaise sauce £2.25), which tasted so good I could have drank it straight from the jug. I didn't but you know I totally would've) Side orders of roasted field mushrooms £3.25), green vegetables £3.75) and onion rings £3) set off our meal perfectly. By this point we'd eaten a lot of food. But I couldn't leave without pudding. and things definitely kicked up a gear when it came to desserts. Sticky Toffee Pudding and Pavlova are my favourite desserts not counting Banoffee Pie of course) and here they both were on the menu. It took very little persuasion to get Tom to share both with me...along with a bottle of Picpoul £26). If you go, I urge you to order the sticky toffee....served piping hot with cold vanilla ice cream it's gooey, sticky, warm and absolutely delicious. I almost wrestled Tom out the way so I could get a bite. The raspberry pavlova £6.75) also did not disappoint. A GIANT meringue stuffed with fresh cream, raspberries, cherries and fruit couli. Wow. Just wow. I would definitely recommend heading to Grill on the Market if you're looking for somewhere lively and affordable to have dinner it would also be great for drinks after work if you're in the area. We were there on a Friday night and they had live music in the form of a pianist playing all my favourite 80s motown songs the perfect setting for a brilliant evening. Big thank you to Kamil for arranging our dinner for us and to our waitor Joe for looking after us brilliantly on the night!"
