Black Milk (Pop-Up, Dessert) – Soho, London

Black Milk, or Black Milk Cereal, is a “milkshake bar and dessert café” with permanent locations in Manchester and Bolton, respectively.

The one we visited in central London is located on the corner of Brewer Street and Great Windmill Street in the heart of Soho.

And we’ll save you the hassle, courtesy of a lack of clear signage indicating its exact location, of walking up and down the two aforementioned streets in our attempts at finding the place.

This particular eatery is actually a pop-up restaurant that’s currently setup shop on the ground floor of the well-established Italian fashion label Fiorucci.

This clothes brand has a café area located on the ground floor with seating for 20.

Chocolate Oreo, £8.00

This busy-looking and freshly made Chocolate Oreo Waffle will be a delight for all lovers of Oreo.

With dollops of ice cream, chocolate sauce, cream, and lots of Oreos, the three of us found it all to be very sugary, with the crushed biscuits lending an altogether chalky texture, though one Lion thought it to be “perfectly fine”. Perhaps some more ice cream might have been better in place of all that cream. Sadly, when we visited, they were having issues with the waffle machine, resulting in a barely warm waffle.

Red Velvet Cake with White Chocolate Shake, £8.50

A “freak shake” indeed, which you’ll either dig, quite literally it turns out, or you won’t. For us, it was all a bit OTT.

The Red Velvet Cake, with its thick layer of sickly icing sugar, turned out to be a fairly dense affair, and a little dry too, perhaps because it was left out in the open without being covered. Whatever the case, add to it was a thick swirl of cream, which itself was topped with rice crispies-like shapes, marshmellow bits, and rainbow sprinkles, making the entire thing a difficult eat.

The White Chocolate Shake turned out to be far more milkier in consistency than we’d anticipated. Not sure if this was design or not, but we all picked up on the weird liquorice taste, which didn’t quite gel with the taste of the cake.

In the end, it all came across as rather disjointed. Perhaps one for the kids?!

Triple Oreo Cheesecake with Double Oreo Shake, £8.50

This Triple Oreo Cheesecake with Double Oreo Shake appeared a little more coherent, except that the former was again rather dense in nature.

As for the shake, then the first thing to come through was the caramel taste, with little of the Oreo coming through. Again, it was milky in consistency, indicating design rather than accident.

It was quite authentic in what it promised, and certainly far less sugary than the above. A decent thing without being anything memorable.

Salted Caramel Stake – Salted Caramel Cake with Biscoff Shake £8.50

This was the last one we managed, and perhaps the best of the lot. What we also discovered, not by design but by accident, was perhaps the reason why these freak shakes are so watery. But more on that later.

Starting with the Salted Caramel Cake, this was the best of the trio had, being far lighter and more moist than the Red Velvet, with good amounts of ultra-sweet, smooth caramel filling, topped with little balls of chewy caramel. Had with the milky Biscoff Shake, and the entire thing was, in spite of our sweet tooths, extremely sweet! We barely managed a few spoons each before admitting defeat.

But, here’s the discovery we made after a piece of the cake fell into the milk. The sweetness of the cake appeared to be dampened somewhat when dipped and drenched in the milkshake, making it far easier to take down.