Roast Dinners in London

This is a roast dinner review of Kerridge’s Bar & Grill, Westminster. WARNING. There are compliments ahead.

But first, can you help your country in it’s time of need?

Book a Sunday roast. Book a Sunday roast every week. Even in January. Especially in January.

This is your country’s time of need (although every day since roughly June 2016 has been your country’s time of need). All you need to is have a few more Sunday roasts. I’m doing my bit – painfully so, sometimes.

And that will get our economy back on track. Deal? Why are you questioning economic advice from a guy happy to spend £42.50 (hi Tom!) on a roast dinner? I got a Desmond in Business Studies & Economics, thanks, at the same time as failing full-time jobs and getting a 1st class degree in getting off my tits at fabric nightclub.

Seen who else wants our help?

Yeah, he who mocked European military strength. told us we were delinquent, woke, having our civilisation undermined…now demands our military help with the Straights of Hormuz.

The Gays of Hormuz apparently have no such issue.

Gravy Storm: Grandad and his Plate Crossing the Table

Oh we went to see the Turner and Constable exhibition. Lots of old people there. My parents are old. They were happy.

Also Constable painted this:

Impressive, huh? First time I’ve ever been to an exhibition where I’ve been so inspired to load up ChatGPT by room two.

Anyway, roast dinners. My mother was a bit jealous of us going to the Connaught Grill last year, so we took her Kerridge’s Bar & Grill this Sunday, which is only half the price of the Connaught Grill – a sufficiently eye-poppingly expensive meal for mother. But one lives in London and is impervious to such pricing shenanigans nowadays.

£42.50 for a roast dinner. Fine. £42.50 will seem like a bargain in a few months after Trumpflation anyway.

Guess who owned shares in a 3x leveraged oil fund last year but sold them in November? Yes they are 4x the value now.

Yeah and sold Nvidia shares at a 50% profit right after they started going up when ChatGPT came along. 12x the value now.

But I’ve just bought a roast dinner for £42.50. Which is worth…approximately £0.00 now it’s in my stomach. I am a good investor, and a wise economist. Honest. Could do with the war ending. In fact, can we go back in time and elect Kamala? Maybe also keep Rish…whoa…maybe I should go back to talking about the menu.

Gravy, Steam and Speed

Right, the roast dinner menu. If you fancy ribeye of beef, then you would be in luck. If not, then, erm, what are you doing in a restaurant on a Sunday745? I have no idea how that 745 slipped in there.

Kerridge’s Bar & Grill is a proper restaurant and they gave us a mini thing (why the hell have I pigeon-holed myself into having the same meal every week) which was stunning, and without giving too much away, a sign of things to come. I was only half-listening and didn’t take in the explanation, but basically a tiny parsnip pie with curried sauce/mayo on the top and things.

Bread came too – both sourdough and treacle bread, the latter was really sweet – they even gave my mother a Mother’s Day gift of some bread to take home, which was even sweeter. Multiple members of the waiting staff wished her a Happy Mother’s Day, though I’m not sure she heard most of them as she struggled with her hearing aid batteries. Oops.

Pretty much the only complaint I’m going to make is that the roast dinner turned up too quickly, before we’d properly finished the bread. At a pub, that would have been about the normal space of time, but they’d served us bread and a tiny, erm, thing in between…so the wait should have been a little longer. Correct, that means I’m not even complaining about the roast potatoes this week. I shit you not.

It was one of those plate it yourself efforts, which comes with the advantage that you only need to have a tiny bit of red cabbage and can keep it under control, but the disadvantage of it looking a bit rubbish because my plating skills are worse that my investment advice. Morgan Sindall down 20% in the last couple of weeks…great company…makes no sense, and this is absolutely NOT investment advice. This is roast dinner advice. Book a table at Kerridge Bar & Grill. Don’t bother reading the rest of this shit. You’re past the fun bit anyway. It’s all just cabbage and stuff now.

A Study of Gravy in Changing Light

Red cabbage was punchy but nicely so. Slightly sticky texture, and didn’t pollute anything because I was in control. TAKE BACK CONTROL…of your cabbage portions. Only 40 years away from those sunlit uplands that Brexit promised us.

The mashed swede was utterly glorious. Buttery flavour, creamy texture and plenty of pepper for the seasoning. Huge fan…wish I could have eaten more, but I had other priorities.

We ordered the cauliflower cheese as an extra, which was £9.00 a dish, and comfortably fed two.

This was another wow – the depth of the cheese was stunning, very much on the mature side, the cauliflower was soft but not mushy. Best cauliflower cheese for a long time – and it even looks the part, despite my photography skills.

Something strange happened, in the neighbourhood…the roast potatoes had probably been cooked the same day. Same day! Can you believe it? They were actually hot hot, like been cooked recently and not just heated up in a microwave hot (someone in the kitchen at Kerridge’s Bar & Grill possibly laughing at my naivety but pray not).

Properly crispy outsides with a real nice crunch, soft on the inside. I’ve had better, like, Blacklock, for example, or maybe The Audley Public House last year…but it’s rare they are this good. Pretty huge too.

The Yorkshire pudding was stuffed, like I will still feel the day after eating this, with some kind of slow-cooked beef stew. I’m not sure the contrast went that well with the ribeye of beef, yet in itself the beef stew (ish) stuffing was still superb. The Yorkshire pudding itself was reasonably freshly cooked, if a tad dry to top.

The beef ribeye was pretty top notch, even if it looks weird in my photograph with the gravy having been poured on top, and a stray bonus garlic clove, along with some red onion (tasted odd…didn’t rate).

It comes with some fat, and is a tiny bit chewy in places – but this is because it is ribeye of beef. It was pretty damn glorious.

Finally, the gravy was on the rich side, it worked really well with the beef, had a reasonable amount of consistency – and we were allowed extra, without being charged for it. Bonus.

Kerridge’s Bar & Grill

Well, Tom, you did alright.

Those who cling to a specific presentation of a roast dinner might have some qualms on first sight, but I can promise you that this is an excellent roast dinner, and will really take some beating.

Crispy and freshly-cooked roast potatoes, some punchy cheese in the cauliflower cheese, the buttery/peppery mashed swede was utterly gorgeous, really good cut of meat, bonus garlic clove and pretty good gravy.

Complaints are at the margins, the yorkie was a bit dry and crispy to top, plus the meal came far too quickly after being served some bread.

Service was excellent throughout, the room is pretty gorgeous too – a large kind of banquet hall vibe, lots of almost turquoise tones, with pillars to give it a sense of grandness. The hotel it is set in, The Corinthia, comes with pianist, flower shop – everything you’d expect at a Travelodge, and more. If you have a few quid/dollars in your account, this really would be a fine place to stay.

Scores around the table – we all had the beef (were it not for having a blog, I would have gone off-piste) were an 8.50, and 8.60, a 9.00 – and my score is an 8.88 out of 10. Thoroughly impressed.

No roast dinner next weekend as I’m in Morocco, and no I haven’t found anywhere selling roast dinners there. A London pub, I have found, but you need to smoke a minimum of two Benson & Hedges per drink to be allowed in…so maybe I won’t be eating, or even drinking there.