Bloc+
Every gig here is free at the door, roughly 400 a year, and the kitchen is what pays for it: food covers went from about 300 a week to between 1,500 and 1,800 as the deals took hold.
Why go
John Burns opened Bloc+ in January 2001 in a basement on Bath Street, a stretch otherwise given over to chain bars. The booking policy is a stated ethic rather than a vibe: "We pay every band, we feed every band, we water them...totally against the 'pay to play' ethic." The kitchen, run by Danny McLaren, cooks fresh on site and has built its reputation on nightly deals that have run at £3 for pasta, £5 for sirloin, £4 for fried chicken, each with a vegan alternative, plus local-ingredient experiments like Buckfast ice cream and Irn-Bru pulled pork. Around 40 craft beers sit behind the bar. The trade paper marked the twentieth anniversary in 2021 with a piece titled "two decades of magic and mayhem," which is the accurate register.
Order this / avoid
- Order: whatever the deal is that night, and the pizza. Keir Roper-Caldbeck found the
pizza is excellent with a paper thin, crisp base,
and rated the tempura forcrisp vegetables, crisp batter and none of that whiff of old oil common to lesser establishments.
2 - Avoid: planning a conversation. Bands or DJs play seven nights a week, and the afternoon is the only quiet part of the day.
What locals & experts say
- SLTN Awards (2019): Bloc+ took both Late Night Venue of the Year and Independent Pub/Bar of the Year, having won the trade paper's Music Bar of the Year in 2011.1
- The Skinny (Keir Roper-Caldbeck, 2011): the room is one where
battered wooden benches and tables and easygoing staff are welcoming in the quiet of the afternoon,
with a menu that ran to a butifarra negra pizza of chorizo and Scottish black pudding.2 - The venue:
excellent bands and DJs 7 nights a week, completely free of charge,
across a deliberately unpigeonholed range of styles.3 - Local rec: Jeff's save, and his note below is why it sits in his core list.
Good to know
- Timing: open from late morning and trading into the small hours, which is the reason to know it. Check the venue's own channels for the current kitchen close.
- Booking: walk-in, and no ticket needed for the music.
- Price: the cheapest real food in this part of the city center, on a $ band. Deal-night plates have run £3 to £5, which is the whole value case.
- Caveat: the deal lineup and the menu have changed since the sources here were published. Look at the board rather than this entry for tonight's price.
Craft signals (a music venue with a bar attached)
The venue describes itself as a forward-thinking independent live music bar with musicians and DJs seven nights a week, and the drink offer behind that is a fixed cheap lineup with no cask, no tap list and no drinks programme published anywhere. CAMRA carries no real ale for the address. Static is a description of the offer rather than a criticism of the room: people come for the booking and the price, and both are honest.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "THE late night place for eclectic food and drinks. An experience."
- Note: "Cheap bar food, late night"
Verdict
should-visit — Bloc+ is worth the detour for what it does at midnight. Bloc+ has run since January 2001 on a model where the music is free and the kitchen pays for it, with 400-plus gigs a year, bands paid and fed on principle, and plates that have sat between £3 and £5 on deal nights. The trade recognized it properly: Late Night Venue of the Year and Independent Pub/Bar of the Year at the 2019 SLTN Awards, after Music Bar of the Year in 2011. The cooking is bar food rather than craft, which is what keeps it off the top rung, but nothing else in the city center does this combination at this hour.