Foxlow is billed as a new
neighbourhood restaurant. It’s on St
John Street in Clerkenwell, so luckily it’s in my neighbourhood.
Space might be a bit of a premium
living in EC1M, but I love the food and drink nearby. For drinks, it’s the Zetter Townhouse for
fabulous cocktails in even more fabulously over the top surroundings, or late
night pisco sours at Giant Robot.
There’s the decadent lobster roll at Burger & Lobster, always
excellent meatballs at the cosy Polpo, or fragrant and spicy brunch at the
Modern Pantry. I haven’t quite made it
to Smithfield meat market at 4am to buy food.
It will happen at some point, maybe not when it's so cold and dark.
Foxlow is a brilliant new
addition. It’s from the Hawksmoor people – there’s still steaks, with the cuts
chalked up on the blackboard each day. The
other meats are divided into slow smoked or charcoal grilled on their menu,
with interesting cuts on offer. There’s
also a beautiful salad bar gleaming next to the kitchen pass.
From the starters, we had the
perfect five pepper squid (£7), with slivers of tiny, tiny limes and red chilli
– crisp but really tender, with no rubbery-ness at all. The pork rillettes (£6.50) were soft, rich
and fatty (by nature of the dish), with little sharp pickles and sourdough.
There was more pig with the mains. The eight hour bacon and chilli bacon rib (£16) was sticky and smoky, and a delicious new way with bacon that I haven’t tried before. The Iberico Pluma (£16) was gently charred on the outside, blushing inside – you can serve this pork medium, and the flavour was incredible.
On the sides we had fries, with
bacon salt sprinkled on top to really add to the pig overload –
sweet/salty/smoky on top of the crispy fries. We also tried the dripping potatoes with gubbeen cheese and capers. The salad bar helped offset some of this – we
had lemon carrots and fennel, for some much-needed vegetables. I confused myself
through not listening, but I think you can select different things from the salad
bar, but it’s not help yourself.
After starting with their take on
the bloody Mary (a Smokestack Mary with gin, tomato, smoked paprika and peated
scotch – not as scarily smoky as it sounds), and all the above food, we were
stuffed. If we do have room, there’s
soft-serve ice-cream in different guises (I think there was an option with
bourbon, maybe one with peanuts too).
