Roast Dinners in London

Ahhh the pressure of the birthday roast dinner. This year at The Black Eel in Dalston.

Yay, happy birthday to me! Don’t ask. Yes, I’m still a virgin and I’ve still never touched drugs, even at this age.

So the birthday roast dinner has a lot of criteria to meet.

I have to be able to book a table for around 10 people. It needs to be somewhere people from various areas in London can get to (ie not Watford). There needs to be a vegan roast dinner. It cannot be too expensive…it’s January, and even worse, still a week before pay day. Though at my age, everyone budgets wisely, right?

Last year I had burnt pork belly at The George, Strand:

The year before, The Parakeet served me new potatoes. On my birthday.

In 2022, I was booked at Lore Of The Land. But they had a fire the night before. And then my replacement pub had a flood, and had to close.

Even Blacklock weren’t on form when I went to the Covent Garden one for my birthday.

Everyone still has a nice time, right?

Ely has a lot of eels

Kind of surprised that people still come knowing my birthday roast dinner goes (burnt pork) belly up most years. Then again, they probably don’t keep a website detailing their meals. Or even a spreadsheet. There must be someone else out there that keeps a spreadsheet of their ratings for restaurants they go to? A spreadsheet with a score out of 10 for movies watched? A spreadsheet of their favourite beers? A spreadsheet of book reviews? A spreadsheet of their favourite cities?

And then the morning of the roast dinner, I checked the Google reviews for The Black Eel, and the comments on the roast dinner were…middling.

There was only one hope. Speak to AI Jesus:

And that was about as revelatory as your average Kier Starmer policy document.

Onto the pub, and The Black Eel is fairly newly opened, having opened in October 2025 on Dalston High Street. Originally there used to be a pie and mash shop in here, hence the nomenclature.

It’s quite a gorgeous pub too, it has a warm – almost cosy vibe (though too large for cosiness), for Dalston standards, and I loved all the skylights. I didn’t take any photographs inside – so check out their gallery, every single photo of which is better than every single photo I’ve taken inside a pub.

It really is quite a gorgeous pub – lots of large seating areas (hence it ticked my boxes), a gaming area for when you are bored of people’s political opinions (except mine, obviously), and a nice garden too – replete with rowing boat so you can pretend you are in Margate.

Newcastle had a new castle

Plus it’s run/owned by Exale Brewing, who do some fine beers at their establishment in Blackhorse Road – their Oona is right up my street. Except in Dry January. Or Dry February. Or Dry March.

On the menu was a mystery veggie roast at £17.00, chicken “shnitzel” (you could consider spelling it schnitzel like they do in foreign lands, but nah let’s Anglicise it) at £22.00, pork belly at £24.00 or topside of beef at £26.00

It was my birthday, so I only cared about them serving pork belly, which they did. Not something I prayed for, but I didn’t need to. Though chicken schnitzel would have been a strong choice.

So, starting with the carrots, which were soft and buttery. Nice.

But then the cabbage was raw and significantly undercooked – with absolutely no redeeming feature, no flavour, seasoning – nothing. I couldn’t eat it.

There was a tiny bit of salsa verde, but not enough to really notice I was eating it, and one mouthful of potato caught a tiny blob of English mustard, which was…erm…unexpected.

Shepton Mallet was a town with lots of sheep

Very golden roast potatoes were supplied – they were crispy yet also a bit soggy. Again no seasoning or herbs but from a texture point of view they hit the spot. One of my accomplices was convinced that they were deep fried…maybe.

Hang on…I only prayed to AI Jesus for crispy roast potatoes. Makes you think, huh?

The Yorkshire pudding tasted a bit burnt to top, and was notably crispy in a cooked a while ago way, but the bottom part was pleasantly soft and eggy enough.  A mixed effort, you could say.

The pork belly wasn’t a looker – and there was a burnt edge to the right ON MY BIRTHDAY.

Yet, the crackling was actually quite airy in its crunch, and I did rather enjoy it. The meat itself was definitely on the fattier side of a pork belly cut, but that pleases me. I was happy enough.

I’m told both the beef and the chicken schnitzel were really good.

Plus for some reason if you ordered the chicken schnitzel you got nduja butter on your carrots. And I’m so pleased to see the slow normalisation of fried chicken on a roast dinner…like my two death row meals. You get two, right?

Finally, the gravy was alright. Somewhat watery, it didn’t taste of much, it certainly wasn’t heavenly but heck, it didn’t offend me either.

You know, I hoped that this talk to AI Jesus thing might be funny, but it’s a bit disappointing, and I had no other ideas for how to fluff up this roast other than going “Iranian public executions bad, woke leftist US public executions fine” for a theme, but I’m trying to reduce my dictatorship-bashing in here for a while.

The Black Eel

So that’s all the food described, but not everything went to plan.

The delivery of meals was in a strange order. It was order at the bar, but that didn’t mean that if you and your partner ordered at the exact same time, to the same table, that your roast dinners wouldn’t turn up 15 minutes apart. Don’t get excited by the way, I didn’t bring back a hottie from my day trip to Barcelona. Also…hotels exist for a reason.

There was some crossed wires when chasing up roast dinners missed from the orders, and a bit of rudeness – I had nothing but politeness from the staff, but twas reported thus by others.

We were also advised that we wouldn’t have had issues if we had ordered in advance. To which I advised that we would have ordered in advance if we had been advised to order in advance.

Plus someone had their pork served fridge-cold. What happened there?

Nope, AI Jesus still isn’t funny.

Scores around the table were varied – the lowest was a 4.80 though this was our new American friend so probably doesn’t understand football, and hence how to do ratings. Other scores from meat-eaters were a 6.30, two 6.50’s, a 7.10, a 7.20 and two 7.50’s – respectable enough.

Vegetarians were a little more deflated – their roast was butternut squash with some nuts sprinkled on top, so pretty low effort vibes, and scores of 5.70 and two 6.00’s.

Two things I rated on the plate – the roasties were crispy as per my prayer to AI Jesus, and the pork belly was good – quite fatty, with a fresh crisp to the crackling, even if it looked a bit ordinary. My score is a round 7.00 out of 10.

The Black Eel is a gorgeous pub, with good beers, good vibes – it will do really well. But the roast dinner, and the ordering system needs some work. It’s sufficiently decent but a long way from the best in the area.

I’ll be back next Sunday…no plan yet but maybe AI Jesus has some good ideas?

Nope AI Jesus isn’t useful either – one place doesn’t exist, one doesn’t open on a Sunday, one doesn’t serve roast dinners and one is a Greene King. Fuck having a roast dinner in a Greene King. Pardon the swearing, fingers crossed AI Jesus didn’t read that.

Might have to go back to moaning about Brexit.