Hill & Szrok
The butcher's block that used to be a communal dinner table for twelve is a butcher's block again, and the shop behind it still buys whole animals and cuts them down to the offal (Hill & Szrok, BigHospitality).
Why go
Read this before you book anything. The evening cookshop is shut. The venue's own hours page says "the Cookshop is closed indefinitely as of January 27th", and Hot Dinners reported the last service as 24 January 2025 after eleven years. The shop is open six days and Sunday afternoons, and that is the whole business now.
What the shop is remains worth the walk. Tom Richardson Hill trained in butchery at Godfreys in Highbury Barn and opened this place in March 2014 with chef Alex Szrok, out of The Eagle in Farringdon, and Luca Mathiszig-Lee, who was 23 and running the bar at The 3 Crowns. The plan then was rare breed, free range and organic meat, whole animals, and using "every part of the animal, from standard and more familiar cuts to offal and cheaper, lesser-used cuts". The fit-out was built for that: tiled walls, a wood and brass window fridge, a central marble counter.
The evening service worked because the meat was already in the building. Jake Missing gave it 8.5 for The Infatuation and wrote that it was "one of the few London restaurants doing steak justice". Three working chefs put it in print between 2022 and 2024. All of that is history now, and the entry keeps it because it tells you what kind of counter this is.
Order this / avoid
- Buy: dry-aged beef ribs off the window fridge. Ask what came in whole this week and take the cut nobody else is asking for, because that is what a whole-carcass shop is for. Their own Cumberland sausages and bacon. Romney lamb if it is on, which is the breed Missing went through three cutlets of.
- Avoid: turning up hungry expecting dinner. Also avoid reading anything about the Old Street pub as if it applies here. That was 8 East Road, it opened in 2016, and it closed.
What locals & experts say
- Jake Missing, The Infatuation, scored 8.5, on the service that has since closed:
Hill & Szrok is one of the few London restaurants doing steak justice.
On the room, without flattery:The restaurant isn't exactly pretty.
On the rib-eye:Charred almost black, still bouncy, and with melting fat that equates butter on butter.
The page now carries a permanently-closed banner.3 - Emily Yeoh, founder of Two Hot Asians, Trippin, August 2024, five months before the dinners stopped:
This is my local butcher that turns into a cook shop restaurant in the evenings, serving the most delicious cuts of meat. They just know how to cook meat to perfection, and I've had cuts of meat in there that I wouldn't normally order in a restaurant.
8 - Brodie Meah, co-founder of Top Cuvée, Trippin, April 2022:
A butchers/restaurant/wine cave, need I say more? Jimmy has an insane collection of wines in the cellar and always worth asking about what's not on the wine list to get something special he's been sitting on. This is without a doubt my favourite spot in London for a steak and glass.
Also historical.9 - Sam Scott, head chef at Ozone Coffee, TOPJAW, April 2024, answering "most underrated":
I don't know how much love Hill & Szrok gets but I love it there. It's a butcher shop, they do dinners.
10 - Gavin Hanly, Hot Dinners, reporting the closure in January 2025:
the retail side of things will remain open as before, so you'll still be able to shop in one of Hackney's best butchers.
He also quotes the venue's own reason:The challenges of staffing in recent years have been tough.
2
Good to know
- Where: 60 Broadway Market E8 4QJ. London Fields overground, then walk down the market street.
- Hours: Monday to Saturday 08:00 to 18:00, Sunday 10:00 to 16:00. First-party and current.
- What it is now: butcher and deli counter. The old restaurant kitchen went into deli production.
- The restaurant space: unresolved. The venue said it would announce plans "in due time" in January 2025 and nothing has been reported since.
- Sites: one. Hill & Szrok Public House at 8 East Road, Old Street opened in January 2016 and has closed. Nothing written about that address applies here.
- Hygiene: no FSA record exists for 60 Broadway Market, which is missing data rather than a finding.
- Buying: walk in. There is an online shop and a collection option.
Verdict
could-visit — Go if you are cooking, and do not go for dinner. The evening cookshop that three London chefs recommended and The Infatuation scored 8.5 closed on 27 January 2025 and the space is still unresolved in the venue's own words. What trades is the butcher it always was underneath: whole carcasses, a master butcher who trained at Godfreys in Highbury Barn, offal and the cheaper cuts used rather than skipped, and dry-aged beef in a wood and brass window fridge. That is a real craft counter and it is worth a stop on Broadway Market if you have a kitchen to take it back to. It is not a rung above that, because the thing everyone was sending people for is the part that stopped, and a shop you cannot eat in is a solid errand rather than a detour.