It’s fashionable today to disclaim roast dinners made out of the home. Mostly the sentiment is justified: they’re too often overpriced, disappointing, ungenerous and with sub-par potatoes. Traditionally, meat sits for too long under hot lights; gravy is thin and ungainly. For many years, only inelegant carvery stations — cheap and filling — or the highest-end dining rooms — pricey but always considered — offered value.
But times have changed. None of this is true at the pubs and restaurants listed here, all of which put roast dinners on a pedestal and work hard to bring magic to the table. Because when a roast dinner is done well, it is one of the finest meals available to humankind, a festival of flavour. There is something quite stupendous about seeing gravy move like lava across a hunk of rare beef; to look up from a crossword to see potatoes gleaming like liquid gold upon their soft bed of sprightly cabbage.
There’s another point here: the perpetual derision from circling nations of Britain’s traditional gastronomy. Well, if you’re due a visitor from France, Spain, Italy or the US, take them to one of these places on a Sunday and watch them warm to our culinary superpower — with the weather cooling, there might be no better opportunity.
Old Nun’s Head
This is a pub that puts to bed any concerns of saggy Yorkshire puddings, overcooked meats and anaemic potatoes. The place trades in mighty – but refreshingly affordable – versions, treating lamb shoulders with grace, rolling pork bellies affectionately, quartering chickens and ensuring they stay moist. As for the gravy, prepare for one that is silky, rich and deep, and know that extra is only a request away. Vegans are welcome here too thanks to a meat-free haggis option; a kids’ roast is half the price but generous for it. All of this, incidentally, in a lovely South London pub, one with character and charm, jovial staff and plenty of decent drinks behind the bar.
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With its house speciality of Scottish beef, dry-aged and butchered on site, The Devonshire is a restaurant that feels like Sunday lunch whatever the day of the week, and never more so than on Sunday itself. Roast rib of beef comes with roast potatoes, leeks, carrots, peas, gravy and Yorkshire pudding. Puddings, in fact, are a strength of The Devonshire, and the only dilemma on the short Sunday menu is deciding between the bread and butter or sticky toffee pudding for dessert. The answer, of, course, is to book in another lunch before leaving, not least because the £29.50 cost of the roast beef is a bit of a snip compared to the evening menu. And don’t be deterred by how rammed the ground-floor pub is: the two floors of dining rooms above, with their dazzling white tablecloths and light flooding in through huge windows, are serene in comparison, while a roof terrace overlooking the Piccadilly Theatre (currently home to Moulin Rouge) feels like the most Soho place in Soho.
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Sunday lunch is chief among the attractions of a restaurant that has much to recommend it beyond beef with all the trimmings: riverside views from the first-floor dining room, knockout cocktails shaken behind the ground-floor bar, buttersoft leather furnishings, pretty crockery and lovely staff happy to accommodate one’s offspring whether that means children or small dogs (the restaurant is not so much dog-friendly as pooch passionate). Lake District beef comes as côte de boeuf and Chateaubriand for two to share, or there are solo portions of rib, sirloin and roast chicken, all served with humungous trimmings of Yorkshire pudding, glazed carrots, hispi cabbage, roast potatoes and sausage stuffing, plus gravy, horseradish and bread sauce. Already feeling stuffed? Kick things off with a light starter of red prawns and swap sticky toffee pudding for chocolate martinis.
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The Sunday roast at Blacklock’s original Soho location is the stuff of lunching legend and requires booking weeks ahead. Thankfully the addition of newer branches at Canary Wharf, Covent Garden, Shoreditch and in the City means one needn’t wait so long between lunches to get one’s fix of 55-day aged beef rump, 28-day aged lamb leg and 21-day aged pork loin roasted over open coals and English oak and sourced from family-run farms in Cornwall. There’s a celeriac roast for veggies but really, if meat’s not your beat, you’re in the wrong restaurant: the Bloody Mary is seasoned with a slug of beef jus, carby starters include pig’s head on toast, the spuds are roasted in duck fat while the showstopping main course is a plate piled high with two dozen chops for two to share. But the best thing about Blacklock? Not one but two gravy boats with each roast; empty one over the meat and use the other as an all-purpose dip.
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Many diners will only know this Covent Garden spin-off from Mayfair’s Kitty Fisher’s as a classy venue for business lunches and pre-theatre suppers but Sunday lunch allows a more leisurely opportunity to appreciate the charm of a dining room that maintains Kitty’s louche elegance but with more elbow room and daylight. A trio of roasts includes sirloin with horseradish, chicken with dill mayo and celeriac with romesco; all come with fluffy Yorkshires, crunchy potatoes, chunky carrots, crisp king cabbage and gooey cauliflower cheese. The hardest choice, however, is not between roasts but wondering whether to start with a cod’s roe crumpet or a ham and cheese toastie; mull over the decision with a Bad Kitty cocktail of gin, sloe gin, elderflower, lemon and cava.
Boundary Shoreditch
It is the enormity of the roasts at The Boundary Shoreditch that hits first. They are gargantuan, and when it comes to Sunday lunch, size matters. Considerable scale is particularly true of the half-chicken (free range, impressively), which isn’t dry and arrives with crispy skin in a pool of decent gravy. Add to this homemade stuffing, well seasoned, and veg unbridled by unnecessary honey and we have £22 very well spent. The roast potatoes? Such a tricky arena. They’re good. The Yorkshire puddings might be among the best in the capital. More assured still are the Bloody Marys, made by wonderful staff and a must order. is an exceptional iteration of the classic. A note too for the house pickles, oysters and brisket croquettes, all of which — for the hungry — will always be strong precursors to the main event.
Steven Joyce
Chelsea by way of Monte Carlo might not sound like the most obvious backstory for a Sunday roast. This Monégasque import, however, nails the meat and a mountain of veg formula for a polyglot crowd of SW3 locals who look like they’d be equally at home in Le Petit BeefBar’s outposts in Méribel, Mykonos and Milan. Cauliflower-sized Yorkshire puddings sit atop roasted Black Angus in a copper pan piled high with beef-fat potatoes and roast seasonal veg, with a nose-prickling horseradish cream on the side and a jug of red wine jus to drown everything with. Starters are just as good — bao buns deep-filled with jasmine tea-smoked short rib, Kobe beef tallow-fried chicken in Cinzano marinade — while the caramelised brioche French toast smothered in salted caramel sauce is one of London’s essential puddings. Knockout cocktails and kind staff just about make the £39 price tag for roast beef palatable.
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The Twenty-Two easily offers one of the finest roasts in the capital — save for its Yorkshire pudding. This misstep is confusing on many levels: conceptually, sensorily, even psychologically, ticking every box but with the one red flag, like falling in love with somebody only to discover you’re related to them. Still, Yorkshires are easily remedied — far more so than genetic material — and those other, arguably less tangible boxes are ticked with aplomb. Roasties that shatter into golden shards, to reveal luscious, fluffy potato within; joyful chicken cooked as chicken should be; spring greens that do vivid justice to their name; and to top it all off, a rich, moreish gravy. Wine is precisely suggested — we had a positively blinding Burgundy — while the warmly furnished dining room it is all served in is almost hedonistically beautiful. Staff are a delight. Given all that, one could easily forget the Yorkshires and say “I do” to Twenty-Two.
Roast dinners are notoriously difficult to get right in a pub setting. At the Hare and Billet on Blackheath, even the roasts late in the day are effortlessly solid. When available, the porchetta is a standout, lovingly rolled with herbs and packed with flavour, but all the meats are quite obviously high quality and worth the £18 or so price tag. Portions are generous, too, and something must be said for the trimmings, which change with the season. In winter, expect kale, carrots and red cabbage, all swimming in an excellently rich gravy. The roast potatoes are the trickiest part of a pub roast. Here they are decent, while the Yorkshire puddings are billowing and enormous. A word must be said for the vegan/vegetarian option, too — a beetroot Wellington is given as much care and attention as the pork, beef and chicken, lightly spiced and not at all dry. It would be advisable to get some or all of the sides; the cauliflower cheese is faultless, the pigs-in-blankets a dutiful reminder that the little chaps must not be a preserve of the festive period.
The Watermans Arms in Barnes opened this year with a hospitality dream team in charge. In the kitchen is Sam Andrews, formerly of the Camberwell Arms and Soho joint Ducksoup. Simon Walsh, once of the Anglesea Arms in Hammersmith, leads front of house, while Patty&Bun founder Joe Grossmann runs the whole show. On Sundays, Andrews turns his hand to roasts, though a modern iteration thereof: at The Watermans, the Sunday menu is bold and generous, with the likes of lamb shoulder or saddle, pork collar, porchetta, half chicken or beef rump. Here, the produce is shining and the cooking sound. Sides of roast potatoes, sand carrots, braised greens and other assortments make for a wonderful lunch,
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Despite the rather grim name, The Pig and Butcher is a light-filled Angel gastropub with a cheery farmhouse kitchen-style interior and a commitment to sourcing not only rare-breed pig but beef and lamb too, and butchering the carcasses on site. Cumbrian Herdwick hogget leg, Tamworth pork loin and salt-aged Yorkshire sirloin come with beef-dripping roasties, Yorkshires, greens and cauliflower cheese. The dishes to share, though, are even better: Label Anglais chicken crown with wild garlic and brioche stuffing, and Daphne’s Welsh lamb shoulder with puffed spelt and balsamic glaze. The rest of the menu displays the same attention to top-notch British ingredients: cured Cornish mackerel with peas to start, a buttermilk pudding with Kentish strawberries and a cracking British cheeseboard. To drink, there are wines from small-scale, family-owned producers and a terrific list of food-friendly European beer by the bottle.
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The key to a knockout Sunday roast is in all the details and everything at this east London landmark is bang on target. The bread is black treacle and caraway sourdough (with cultured butter to slather on), the beef is Hereford rump and the pork is Tamworth belly and loin. The whole chicken to share, meanwhile, comes with a roast tomato salad and the menu is stuffed with no end of delicious-sounding things: starters of duck liver parfait and crab and brown shrimp cocktail to start, afters of brown butter and honey tart or hot chocolate pudding and toffee sauce and, best of all, a curried lamb bun with salt-lime yoghurt to snack on while deciding what else to eat. Three courses clock in at £42; you can bring your dog to eat in the handsome ground-floor pub; the smart dining room upstairs, however, is a pooch-free zone.
The Camberwell Arms is owned by the same people behind rooftop hipster heaven Frank’s in Peckham but don’t let that put you off: this is a neighbourhood pub where the cool factor comes with a warm welcome. Many restaurants talk about serving food family-style, but Sunday lunch at the Camberwell is the real deal, with all the roasts designed for the table to share. That might mean half a spit-roast chicken with braised spinach and garlic yoghurt, or roast pork belly with shaved white cabbage, pickled rhubarb and buttermilk, both designed for two, though the best way to approach the food here is to go as a gang and divvy up various bits of meat and poultry around the table, and why not throw in a beef and bone-marrow pie for good measure? After all that richness, puds come with a welcome sharp edge: blood orange and almond galette with crème fraîche, say, or spiced rhubarb cake and fool.
London’s only Michelin-starred gastropub (and sibling to the fine-dining Ledbury) first came to fame in the noughties for its now-legendary venison Scotch eggs, which gives as good an indication as any that, at heart, The Harwood Arms is still a backstreet Fulham boozer, even if the three-course Sunday lunch (£70) now requires booking a couple of months in advance. Still, the best things in life are worth waiting for, and this is arguably London’s best Sunday lunch, offering up big portions of big flavours. Kick off with a round of Scotch eggs while deciding what else to eat: a Spenwood cheese tart to start, then sirloin of belted Galloway with horseradish cream and a wobbly custard flan to finish would be a good introduction. Those lucky enough to become regulars might broaden the repertoire with sea bream tartare, slow-cooked lamb shoulder and blood orange trifle. Game specials in autumn are a must, while venison and pork come from owner Brett Graham’s farm.
Fallow is owned by Jack Croft and Will Murray, two chefs who met on the veg station at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal where they bonded over a shared passion for sustainability, which extends to using paper menus made from harvested algae. For Sunday lunch, the roast beef is rump from retired dairy cow, served with a vast Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, glazed carrots, red cabbage, greens and gravy; elsewhere there’s Middle White pork, and smoked leeks with Bermondsey Hard Pressed cheese for vegetarians, though whatever you eat, don’t leave out an unmissable side order of pommes boulangère, like a potato millefeuille with pools of beef stock seeping out of the wafer-thin layers of spud. Eating with a clear conscience doesn’t come cheap, but no one came to St James’s in search of bargain, and the dining room is a bobby dazzler, all glossy surfaces and green marble illuminated by Tom Dixon lighting.
Highgate’s best boozer (actually down the road by Parliament Hill Fields) is the perfect advert for a London Sunday, where a walk over the Heath from Hampstead can be followed by a mammoth lunch as long as you’ve had the foresight to book ahead. Beef comes as roast Shorthorn rib, there’s lamb rump with mint relish, roast ricotta-stuffed courgette for the veggies and beer-battered haddock with triple-cooked chips for the pescatarians. Naturally, the roasts come with all the trimmings of Yorkshires, roasties and greens; go easy on the side orders (cauliflower cheese) to have any hope of fitting in starters (buttermilk fried chicken) and desserts (sticky banana pudding). To drink, there are cask ales, classic cocktails and a snappy European wine list; if Sunday lunch somehow turns into last orders, it’s worth knowing that there are six bedrooms upstairs to snooze it all off in, with the prospect of washing away the Monday blues with a bracing dip in Highgate Ponds.
Roasts not chops are the name of the game on Sundays at this historic Clerkenwell dining room, where the Grade II-listed wooden booths force diners to sit up and take notice of the food in front of them – which more than merits attention. The spin-off butchers next door is a guarantor of the quality of the meat: Aberdeen Angus rump and Mangalitza pork collar, plus Swaledale lamb shoulder and Aberdeen Angus bone-in sirloin to share. The trimmings show no less thought: roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, of course, but also savoy cabbage with smoked butter, courgettes with green sauce and leafy carrots with sunflower seeds. Starters and desserts are less British in inspiration — lamb with capers, ajo blanco and anchovy; Capezzana olive-oil ice cream — while the globetrotting wine list ranges from house Gascon rosé for £36 to a big-money ‘Cellar List’ of hard-to-find bottles from prestigious producers.
On an unlovely stretch of A-road between Vauxhall and Stockwell, the Canton Arms is part of a crack team of gastropubs that also includes The Clarence Tavern in Stoke Newington, Waterloo’s Anchor and Hope and the Magdalen Arms in Oxford. Each is famous for its Sunday lunch, but the Canton wins by a whisker for being the pub which still feels closest to a local boozer, albeit one serving a menu that is modern British in the best sense, exposing native ingredients to overseas influences to delicious effect. Roast Dexter beef comes with green beans, roasties and watercress but this is somewhere that proves that sharing is caring, whether half a pot-roast Yorkshire chicken with white beans, radish, baby gem and aioli or the showstopper of salt-marsh lamb shoulder with potato and olive-oil gratin, cooked for seven hours to fall-off-the-bone softness for five to fight over.
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From the trio of Gladwin brothers, whose family own not only a Sussex farm but Nutbourne Vineyards, Rabbit’s rus in urbe fantasy extends further than furniture fashioned out of fallen oak trees sawn up by the siblings after a storm. Beef sirloin comes from the family farm or there’s confit Saddleback pork belly, neither exorbitantly priced for Chelsea, with jus made using stocks from the in-house butchery. A celeriac steak with lovage pesto, redolent of the herb garden and vegetable patch, is one of several intriguing meat-free options and, while the kitchen marches to the beat of the sustainable and zero-waste drum, the witty likes of mushroom marmite éclairs with egg confit suggest the chefs don’t bang on about it. British ingredients extend to making a Bloody Mary with vodka from the Adnams brewery on the Suffolk coast and, of course, Nutbourne wines: try a glass of sparking Nutty Brut as an intro to English fizz.
Perfect for a post-Sunday stroll on Clapham Common. The Windmill’s dining room features cosy blue velvet sofa-style booths and the chance of a visit from the pub’s resident dog, Max, if you’re really lucky. Choose from a rump of beef with slow-braised ox cheek; pork belly with pigs in blankets and pork and cranberry stuffing; crown of English turkey also with pigs in blankets; or a vegan salt-baked celeriac with wild mushrooms, spinach and chestnuts. Opt for the sharing roast with a choice of Ginger Pig prime cuts if you fancy an upgrade.
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Heading down into a Soho basement might not seem like the most appealing prospect on a Sunday daytime but the cooking at Temper is well worth forgoing daylight for. An open kitchen sends out flame-licked hunks of barbecued meat, with roast aged beef, pulled lamb shoulder, pork belly and baby chicken arriving at the table smokier than a 20-a-day-habit; be prepared to leave Temper smelling like you’ve been involved in a house fire in which the family pets didn’t survive. Can’t decide what to eat? The three-beast feast to share brings aged roast beef, roast pork and smoked lamb shoulder. Fish eaters and veggies get wood-roasted sea bass and butternut squash mole respectively, there are deep-dish cookies and peanut chocolate tarts to finish, while a strong Mexican accent comes out in tacos and nachos to snack on and a trio of margaritas. And if natural light is required, ask for a table under the skylights up to the pavement.
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A classic Islington gastropub from the New Labour noughties, The Drapers Arms is testament to the timeless qualities of artful simplicity (plain wooden tables, church-hall chairs) married to high-end detailing such as twinkly chandeliers and smart checkerboard floors. Log-burning stoves keep things cosy in winter and there’s a small courtyard garden for summer which takes the pub’s atmosphere of low-key chic outside. Roast pork belly, roast lamb loin chops and rare roast 48-day aged sirloin come with the classic accompaniments, while sharing roasts (whole chicken, forerib of beef, seven-hour shoulder of lamb) are perfect for lazy singletons to treat those friends who always have them round for dinner without having to cook in return. Veggies get Med-accented artichokes barigoule or baked aubergine, there are decent fish and seafood options too, while a wine list assembled with a connoisseur’s eye has almost 20 bottles by the carafe to stop the start of the week being a write-off.
The Pig’s Head, Clapham
Planet-friendly potatoes and Yorkshire puddings as big as your head, in a farmhouse-style dining room right in the heart of Clapham Old Town. Around a third 50 of the Sunday lunch menu at The Pig’s Head is plant-based and every aspect has been designed with the environment in mind, from sustainably-spirited cocktails to meat from its on-site butchery (there’s even eco-friendly loo-roll in the bathrooms). Expect cosy Soho House-style interiors and order the mushroom Wellington if you fancy a (generously sized) meat-free option. Staff will offer you the option of taking your leftovers home if you can’t finish your lunch to minimise waste.
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Catching the tube to Richmond then the train a couple of stops further to Egham is worth an hour of anyone’s time to reach this picture-perfect pub (complete with suntrap terrace) squirreled down a lane by Windsor Great Park. Steven Ellis worked under Clare Smyth at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and the three-Michelin-starred chef is such a fan of Ellis’s cooking that she brought her Core team here for a staff jolly (they loved it). Smyth really ought to have come on a Sunday, though, when there’s a knockout rib of beef, thick-cut in velvety pink slabs and served with pillowy Yorkshire puds, crisp roasties and a perfect cauliflower cheese; elsewhere are more cheffy things like pig’s trotter terrine and fancy desserts made by Ellis’ pastry-chef wife Ami: try the superb lemon parfait, glazed with lemon jelly made from the lemon skins and juice. To drink, there is Windsor Great Park sparkling wine and Bailiwick Great Park Ale brewed with hops growing over the park wall.
