Roast Dinners in London

This week’s roast dinner comes from Alice House in West Hampstead, chosen solely because it is on the way to Luton Airport.

Yep, I’m on holiday.

Cheers from Tallinn!

I hope you are all working hard back there whilst I’m totally not sunning myself even vaguely in 16’C with occasional downpours.

TL:DR is that you should all be thankful that your friendly AI engineers working for luminaries like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, are working 7 days a week, working 80 hour weeks, so you don’t need to cannot work in the future.

Maybe you are even reading from the Farage future, reminiscing on what the good old days were like when we used to moan about people going on holiday to Benidorm, and having a roast dinner every day.

And when she was thought of as our worst Prime Minister ever. Ahh the good old days.

House of Commons

So as I’ve alluded to, I’m on holiday as I write this, and hence there might be an argument to go straight in for the review.

Especially as Alice House was picked simply and only for being the closest place to a train station on the way to Luton Airport.

It’s actually an alright pub, with a centre bar, some fairly uninteresting beers on draught but at least they had some from indepedent (ish) breweries, and a really nice little area out front to sit in the sunshine.

The young lady serving was friendly, and assured me that I could order, eat and leave within 30 minutes.

On the menu was lamb rump at £25.00, beef rump at £25.00, pork belly (not rump) at £22.50, half a chicken at £23.50 or a baked aubergine thing at £19.00.

I chose the first thing I saw pretty much because I was in a rush.

White House

Our roasts came pretty quickly.

Kind of pointless using that photograph isn’t it?

Right, you’ve seen the roast dinner now so I’ll start with the carrots, which were soft yet seemed a little undercooked too. Roasted, cannot say I noted any flavour other than carrot.

The green beans were rather crunchy. Yeah that’s all you are getting in the way of a description.

Finally for the vegetables, the hispi cabbage – which normally I love, however again it was just too crunchy here to get the best out of it, nicely chargrilled which gave it a tiny bit of smokiness, but otherwise…hmmm.

House Of Saud

Just two roast potatoes though they were quite large, and had seen some seasoning.

Some crispy sides, and quite soft on the inside – but the quality of potato wasn’t especially good (can be tricky this time of year) and they were quite dry inside. Decent effort, but a fair way from what we need.

The Yorkshire pudding was quite freshly cooked, if it still had some evidence of heatlampitis (and certainly would later in the day). Alas, it did some across as rather greasy in texture.

The lamb was fairly well cooked, more so than I’d prefer. It was still quite pleasant to eat, though a long way from anything that would wow me, and writing this 3 days after with minimal notes, it definitely hasn’t stuck in the memory.

Finally the gravy was a bit yacky. Decent consistency – this feels like a battle we are winning in London right now, but a rather oily taste, so it wasn’t that enjoyable.

Alice House

Oh well.

There isn’t really anything to write home about, hence why I struggled for motivation to even start this post, nor is there enough to hate for me to go all out on a rant, which is equally disappointing.

It was all just kind of like yeah whatever.

My accomplice had the vegan roast, and I have no idea what she thought of it despite the fact I’ve spent 3 days on holiday with her so far.

I think she enjoyed it more than I did. Update – apparently it scores 9 out of 10. Didn’t see thay one coming.

So the veg was all more or less alright, the roast potatoes similar, the lamb a bit overcooked and the yorkie/gravy a bit oily and yacky. Can you see why I wasn’t so motivated to write this despite it pissing down with rain in Tallinn?

It’s not bad enough to score it that low, so my score is around a 6.30 out of 10.

I arrive back into Heathrow at 1pm on the coming Sunday…are you thinking what I’m thinking? Though quite possibly I’ll be fed up of eating out by then. Will I want another bang average roast dinner?

Anyway, stop reading this shit and get back to work.