Blackfriars Restaurant

About Blackfriars Restaurant

Blackfriars occupies the former refectory of a Dominican friary first recorded in Newcastle in 1239, tucked down Friars Street between Stowell Street and the surviving stretch of the medieval town wall. The restaurant makes a well-known claim to be the oldest purpose-built dining room in the country, and the setting carries it: low stone walls, heavy beams and a cloister garden that opens up in warmer months. It is one of the few places in the city where the building is as much the draw as the cooking, and it sits a short walk from Chinatown, the Assembly Rooms and Grainger Town, which makes it a natural choice for visitors trying to understand the older layers of the city centre.

The kitchen works in a traditional British idiom, leaning on seasonal produce from regional farms and suppliers rather than chasing trends, and the menu changes through the year. Alongside the main dining room the site includes a parlour bar, a tasting room, a banqueting hall and a cookery school, so the same courtyard hosts anything from a weekday lunch to a wedding. Afternoon tea runs on Friday and Saturday afternoons. A heritage trail with information boards and QR codes takes in the friary buildings, which is worth ten minutes before or after a meal. Booking is sensible, particularly at weekends and through December.

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Blog posts and guides that feature Blackfriars Restaurant.

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Newcastle city centre sells a Christmas party two ways: a table at a shared party night, or exclusive hire of a whole room. A guide to the venues, who handles twenty and who handles three hundred, and how everybody gets home.

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Newcastle has two cathedrals within ten minutes of each other, three medieval parish churches, an oval Georgian church above the Quayside and the cloister of a Dominican friary. A guide to the city centre's places of worship, and the honest truth about their opening hours.

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A complete guide to the city centre: how it fits together, what to do with two hours or a full day, and where to go for museums, the Quayside, food, shopping, children, sport and the seasonal calendar.

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Two Michelin-starred tasting menus, a dining room inside a 13th-century friary, Ouseburn favourites and the independent coffee shops that got Newcastle taking coffee seriously.

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Newcastle has four free museums and galleries, a Grade I listed covered market, two miles of medieval town wall, a thousand acres of common land and a free organ recital every Monday. Here is what genuinely costs nothing, and what used to be free but is not any more.

Upcoming Events

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