Hill & Szrok, 60 Broadway Market, London E8 4QJ
Twice-butchered Wagyu, phenomenal desserts and superlative chips: When the support acts outshine the headliner
Even when the bloody Romans showed up to London with their fancy walls and sanitation, they couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw what is now Broadway Market. How could a load of gloomy, bog-born tree huggers get their act together enough to establish such a major trade route, funnelling cattle between here and Essex, especially on an irregular, unbricked road?
Evolving into a bustling street market until the 1970s, supermarkets soon rendered Broadway Market an anachronism to the modern consumer, with their promises of having everything in one place. In 2004, the Residents and Traders Association cordoned it off to restore its former glory, creating what feels like a closed set.
Today, clumped with swarms of young affluents swigging Guinness or martinis because they think they should, Broadway Market functions as an open Beta test of the country life to which they fantasise about fleeing. Think the Postman Pat intro but with a grammar school and a Gail’s.
By 6pm, however, something almost lurid happens, on this quaintly curated little strip. A butcher by day, Hill & Szrok clear out the counters and lay them with cutlery, transforming into their self-coined ‘cookshop’, as if they’ve just had a narrow escape from Prohibitionists.
Hunks of carcass hang in the window to let passersby get a gander, lit by a name-bearing neon sign, metamorphosing into a macabre red light district. Beneath this is a pageantry of their wines soliciting a threesome, at the bare minimum.
Inside, Hill & Szrok have managed to create an atmosphere that’s somewhere between a Speakeasy and a blacksmith. Grill smoke hangs in the air, made traceable by soft, sultry lighting, all backlit with frequent bursts of tallow-generated flames and the shimmer of steel.
Standing ageing chambers provide constant eye-diverting perversions. The main display slab becomes the communal table, the walls lined with a continuous countertop and stools.
The bread fanatic that I am, Hill & Szrok opt for a decidedly based soda bread. A crisp crust with that dense, cake-like quality and a sweetness that demands thick smears of salted butter.
Cobs of corn sculling in spiced thyme butter are one of the best things on the menu; a sparse but deep char gives those popcorn notes between the tight pop of each kernel. Strafed with fresh lime, it verges on dessert.
Dry-aged beef sobrassada on toast speckled with crushed dried chilli and chunks of Guindilla guarding each slice is subtly laced with more spiced honey. It’s the sort of thing Grace Dent would describe as ‘raunchy’. A wreath of mustard greens is thickly dressed and dotted with finely diced shallot, delivering frontal-lobe thwacks of sweet acidity – crucial for what’s about to thud onto our table.
Putting a kitchen in a butcher is reminiscent of that old adage, ‘Why buy the Wagyu from a middleman when you can bypass him altogether’. The menu heaves with it; flat iron, rib cap, wing rib and entrecôte.
Elsewhere there’s the prized Belted Galloway Denver, chops of Romany lamb and Tamworth pork; their available weights gradually being struck through on the chalkboard, as if at silent auction. Plonked down under eyes lit in a way only carnal attraction can, each plate is a conversation killer. Who likes talking during The Deed, anyway?
Our Wagyu rib cap winds its way toward us, the waitress more or less a zookeeper at this point; it’s feeding time and I’m foaming at the mouth. A little peepshow goes through my mammalian brain of all the pictures I’d seen of edge-to-edge cuisson, that irrefutable evidence that at all stages, the animal lived and died with honour.
Having pulled the short straw, however, ours is overcooked by some margin. In what appears to be misjudged rendering, some of that lip-biting blush does however manage to squeeze itself in before it’s too late.
It’s otherwise a magnificent cut; the juices stream into your system, absorbing the power of the pampered beast but it’s all overshadowed by the petit mort of what could’ve been. That said, this mirrored, chestnut slick of a pan sauce is greater than the sum of its parts – which came in handy for some of the best chips I’ve had in a shamefully long time.
Rightfully cooked in tallow, each one is an Armadillo; not-quite-gum-shredding-crunch giving way to innards fudgy but light, along with an aioli that bucks the trend for the mayonnaise-flavoured garlic I’ve been getting recently.
That said, Hill & Szrok’s desserts are quietly phenomenal. A chocolate ganache, littered with sour cherries and cocoa nib flickers with urfa chilli. It’s a Ratatouille moment to how Fruit & Nut used to taste; when Um Bongo was good and plentiful and financial crashes were a rare occurrence.
Cooked to order and with crème fraîche and raspberry conserve are a couple of brown butter cakes; their spartan, WW2 chic energy immediately traces a direct line to St. John. Perhaps unsurprising given that the former co-owner, Alex Szrok, is an alumnus.
They don’t just give madeleines a run for their money but outpace them to my liking. The give of a level 2, maybe 3 mattress that fades into the kind of chew you remember from that one cookie that has since set the standard.
“I’d spread them with the other dessert, but that’s just me” the waitress suggests, surrendering her palms. I can’t help but nod solemnly, for I am with my people.
There’s a particular frustration with ordering steak in restaurants because I cook it at home relatively often. It’s one of the few dishes that makes me sound like all the bellends I avoid eating with. The type that says “I could’ve made loads of that at home for that price” whilst ignoring how the world works. But save for a flame grill, it does rankle that the one time I’m coaxed out from under my rock, I get self-issued with an ‘I told you so’.
Certain that this is a fluke, given what I’ve seen and heard from typically trustworthy sources, I’m haunched to return. Aside from the fare, the most attractive thing about Hill & Szrok is the sense of ownership and enterprise; how it knits the punter and business closer by omitting the middleman. It’s an endearing vote of self-confidence.
Hill & Szrok’s setup echoes how this stretch of London has reclaimed itself; resourcefulness and a bit of business nouse being the pillars of its rejuvenation. Is an overcooked piece of Wagyu ribcap a crime? Of course it is – especially here. But despite getting a taste of Murphy’s Law, through its feel and track record, Hill & Szrok convinced me that it’s a misdemeanour. For now Your Honour, the prosecution naps.