Roast Dinners in London

It’s time to announce The Gravys 2025 – the awards that most pubs/restaurants wouldn’t tell me to fuck off with if it were an actual ceremony, though no doubt some would anyway.

Of course, every pub/restaurant would ignore it. Quite rightly.

OK, it was probably time to write this a few weeks ago, but hey, it’s just two countries bombed by the stable genius over in the country we have a special relationship with into the year, let’s see if I can finish this before he gets to 5..

The roast dinner awards are split into two posts, because it is far too much nonsense to read otherwise – this is The Gravys 2025 (full title to make sure SEO is happy), and then there will be The Roasteds – which will feature the most burnt meat of 2025, the driest Yorkshire pudding and the wankiest gravy.

But for this post, enjoy me actually giving out praise, being nice and trying to find new words for “good”.

Biggest Fucking Carrot

Regular readers (which is mostly the Kremlin and the CCCP, perhaps you but I doubt it) will know that I normally give an award out for best carrot.

Or at least I did in 2024. OK, just 2024.

Look at the size of that big, thick, orange…carrot. What else did you think I was going to end that sentence with? We already know that he’s, erm, dimensionally challenged.

The Camberwell Arms decided to make my writing life easy by providing just 3 things on the plate, and just one vegetable – but at least the carrot was MASSIVE, like the Camberwell MASSIVE.

It was pretty tough too.

I thought I said I was going to write nice stuff? But BIG is best right?

OMG Not Every Vegetable Is A Carrot

Another new award for The Gravys 2025 (getting that SEO title in again) is to celebrate the lesser-used vegetables in the western hemisphere.

Any ideas why carrots are on every single roast dinner ever served? I mean, I like them…but other vegetables are available.

FOWL managed this feat.

Not only did they eschew the omni-presence of orange, but they were the only place to serve sprouts in 2025.

The 14th best roast dinner of 2025, so a pretty commendable effort. And imagination in the vegetables. Dear London chefs – just a tiny bit of imagination please.

Best Dog Experience

Panic not, this is best dog near a roast dinner – not on a roast dinner.

Of course, the winner is Stevie, my regular accomplice’s regularly adopted for the day dog, and she did accompany us to The Larkshall for their dog show Sunday. Of which I was only aware of the “Sunday” part.

If Stevie was a London chef, you’d be getting vegan gravy. And paying extra for it. She’s a madam.

But there is a runner-up, a very close and worthy runner-up.

Never let it be said that this isn’t a classy blog.

Best Service

Remember a time when I used to complain about having to pay a service charge? Yeah that was around 2017. Nowadays I complain when I don’t get a service charge – what am I supposed to do?

Service I normally describe as pleasant and friendly – because it normally is.

You don’t often receive outstanding service. Granted, you can pay for exceptional service, like I did at The Connaught Grill. But it was expected excellence.

There was one pub that went beyond expectations, The Clement Attlee.

They’d messed up in the first place by advising me that the gravy didn’t have tomato in it, because we had someone with a tomato intolerance. Yet when we arrived – they informed me otherwise. The gravy did have tomato in it. What were we to do?

15 minutes later, we saw one of the staff come back from the local shop, with a pot of Bisto. Saved by Bisto…who’d have thought it?

Best Beer Selection

Whilst we’re speaking of The Clement Attlee, the pub that I spent the longest in during 2025 in one session – at around a good 8 hours or so, they can have another award.

Damn I cannot find my photo of the whole bar, but I think they had like 20 different beers on, and we had a pretty good go at them over the day.

Good roast dinner too, but it was everything else that really made The Clement Attlee.

Shame about the 1947 Town & County Planning Act which is the root of our housing crisis, but hey.

Best Ceiling

Yes, this blog has always scraped the barrel for content – this is nothing new. We even had a best ceiling award last year. We?

There was only ever going to be one winner, because I only ever took one photo of a ceiling all year, and that was The Audley Public House.

Getting a table might be a total pain the arse, the clientele a mixture of tourists, Instagrammers and the stuck-up (maybe don’t answer which of those I am…sorry, we are) – but gosh the ceiling is lovely.

Swashbuckling colours, like a visual representation of Sir Ernest Shackleton getting to the South Pole whilst on acid.

Best Plate

I’ve been living in my new flat for over two years, and I still haven’t found any plates that I like enough to buy.

I don’t want these either, but I thought that the plates at The Raglan were pretty cool – old school designs but in pink.

There’s probably a crockery blog somewhere, isn’t there?

Side Dish Actually Worth Paying For

It’s mostly my opinion after several years of adding cauliflower cheese to a roast dinner order that sides are a waste of calories and money.

Like, I’m ordering a 1,000 calorie meal – why the hell do I need sides?

But still…I don’t like tequila but that doesn’t stop me having one if waved in front of me.

INIS is a modern restaurant in Hackney Wick, and is actually built to be a restaurant rather than a warehouse that happens to house one, as is the norm in Hackney Wick.

It’s one of those places where I wish I could offer more awards, but heck, The Devonshire was my second best roast dinner of the year, and it only gets runners-up awards.

I trust the photograph might actually do it some justice, unusually for my standards, but the side-dish of braised leeks was gloriously soft and gooey, the cheddar had a real punch, and the whole dish had a glistening crisp to the top. Top marks.

Yes, it was absolutely unnecessary. But so was that last bump of ketamine you had the other night.

Best Vegetables

You may have noticed that we are into the actual food awards, and still The Moron has only bombed two countries this year at the time of writing.

There’s a few places worth a mention – Meli-Melo on Brick Lane provided spicy vegetables, which I loved.

The Devonshire offered roasted carrots – caramelised par excellence, along with gloriously creamed leeks. Top stuff.

The Rose in Battersea provided utterly glorious, creamy celeriac puree. But I don’t think I’m yet adult enough to hand an award for puree.

The winner of best vegetable award, goes to The Connaught Grill – you’d hope at £78.00 a roast dinner that they’d win an award, and maybe this is just me trying to justify spending £160.00 on a meal whilst watching bill after bill roll in this month…January hurts.

So, flavoursome carrots – but not award-winning. The award is for two concepts – firstly the crispy parsnips which were stunning, the texture was like how the best roast potatoes are, and damn that flavour came through.

But also the cauliflower/broccoli cheese, which was perfectly cooked and had some stunning cheese on it – being my basic Hull self I can describe it as some cross between Cheddar and Parmesan, but with way more depth.

Best Yorkshire Pudding

Damn the quality of Yorkshire puddings went down in 2025. Significantly.

You’ll notice when I do The Roasteds, that there are far more runners-up for worst Yorkshire pudding than worst roast potato – the year before there was so many contenders for worst roast potato.

The runner-up was The Old Ship in Hackney, but even that has caveats, in that it was served cold – yet was Quaver-like in texture to the upper part. However, once you softened it with gravy, it was rather good, with a soft eggy bottom to it.

But the award for best Yorkshire pudding of 2025 goes to The Larkshall in Chingford. An eggy yorkie, soft and fluffy for much of it and crispy to top. And it hadn’t seen a heat lamp.

Increasingly rare perfection.

The Roast Dinners In London Peace Prize

We interrupt this awards ceremony, as all ceremonies should be overshadowed with announcements of inaugural peace prizes, to the most deserving of peoples.

This award is going to a man (has to go to a man) who constantly talks about bringing people together, someone who is adored by many, brings the camaraderie to the friendship with your mates, and gives that sparkle to first dates.

For his contribution to civic dialogue through the shared experience of eating in London, and for using digital platforms to encourage connection across communities, along with peace across the world for all man kind.

This award can only go to one man…

Yes, congratulations to Toby Inskip, aka Eating With Tod, for his relentless, selfless work on bringing peace to all man kind, and ensuring that McDonald’s gets its fair share of promotion in these unfair times of small independents that have paid for Instagram reels by famous influencers getting too many customers.

[Note I hand out this award in jest, whilst Eating With Tod isn’t my cup of tea in terms of content/presentation, I still say fair play to him for creating his brand and making a success of it…plenty of people love what he does.]

Best Roast Potatoes

And back to the awards that Donald Trump hasn’t forced me to offer in exchange for not putting tariffs on this website.

You could argue that this is the most important award as I really begrudge giving out an 8/10, no matter how perfect everything else on the plate is, if the pub/restaurant cannot nail half-decent roasties.

There actually are a few runners-up. The Westbourne served roast potatoes which had actually been recently cooked, they were even quite hot – not to mention the properly crispy outsides, soft inside – and a fair size too.

The Raglan served roasties that were dreamily soft on the inside, freshly cooked and crispy on all of the outsides. Absolutely top marks. Oh…and 5 of them.

The Audley Public House served gold standard roast potatoes, and I thought they were going to be the winner, but I had forgotten about one place…the place with the gloomiest light so the photographs don’t look anywhere near as good as if The Audley Public House had won this award, but who cares:

Origin in Farringdon provided possibly the best roast potatoes – EVER. In the history of roast dinners in London. Crispy on the outside, soft in the inside, freshly made, and cooked with beef dripping – in every way possible these were dreamy.

Yes, better than Blacklock.

Sexiest meat

Here’s the part where you really need a nude image of Geovanni Infantino in your mind to really take in the award. I’m sure Grok would help you with this. Does it nudify blokes, or just women/girls?

So The Raglan and The Railway both provided some really flavoursome lamb. The Devonshire definitely gets a mention here, if more because of how the beef was presented, and the view of the carving of the beef…but holy cow it was soooo tender.

The pedant in me doesn’t want to mention Out-Back after they moaned at me for not being overjoyed at the surprise extra gravy charges on the bill, despite my high rating. Yes I do need to get over Brexit too.

Yet, the beef rump served was sexual. A generous 4 slices of beef rump, all seriously tender, and sexily smoky – the fat rendered close to perfect too.

However…

The Larkshall in Chingford went one better. BBQ beef brisket, and yes it was outdoors (gosh being able to eat outdoors feels like a decade away right now in deepest, darkest January), the beef had a stunning level of smoky flavour that you’d expect at the best smokehouses in town (town as in London, not just Chingford), the meat fell apart, it was melt-in-your-mouth levels of wonder.

It really was the bomb.

Best Gravy

Yo. It’s why Lord Gravy is a thing – to improve the standards of gravy across the universe, or at least London.

Gravy is the key ingredient. Fuck up the gravy, and the whole roast dinner is awful. Fuck up the roast potatoes, and you’ve only ruined the roast potatoes.

There’s actually been quite a few places with really damn good gravy in 2025. Shocker, I know. Maybe my blog has somehow had an impact. LOL. Keep dreaming, Lord Gravy.

For example, Meli Melo supplied deliriously thick gravy, which was creamy and tasted of lamb. It was rather yellow though.

The Raglan supplied gravy that was too thin to be anything other than runner-up, but was really very flavoursome, stuffed full of herbs, pepper and I assume meat stock – and most importantly, was delivered in a tea pot.

The Larkshall could have had another award, with their thick, meaty gravy, I guess infused with the flavours of the brisket. Though it did come in the teeniest, tiny saucepan thing.

And then The Railway in Teddington supplied better gravy than I had anywhere in 2024 – proper, glorious, thick, northern gravy, hearty and herby with a fair amount of seasoning going on too. Most years that would have been a winner.

Yet the winner has to be, maybe, only just but oh my – The Lord Southampton. Alas, a blurry photo, but a thick, proper meat stock kinda gravy – the type that northerners dream of. It truly was divine. Even the southerners on the table loved it.

Any of the runners-up, would have won this award in 2024. Tough, and thick, competition in 2025.

Best Roast Dinner

You might think that you could just look up my League Of Roasts, and use the very clever filtering system I created this year to easily find out what won the award for best roast dinner.

But…

By the way, the website rebuild is great, right? Well, Google doesn’t like it as much as isn’t sending quite the same level of traffic over, but meh, it’ll have to get used to it.

And I think I’ve fixed most of the broken shit now. Anyway, the best roast dinner of the year goes to…

No, actually I’ve just had imaginary communication that The Larkshall don’t want to hand over their imaginary medal for THE BEST ROAST DINNER IN LONDON 2025.

Bravo!

I went to The Larkshall, in Chingford, knowing it was a Young’s pub, expecting watery gravy, roast potatoes cooked the week before – though Google Maps did show some banging meat, so I was hopeful on that front.

I didn’t expect gorgeous gravy, an excellent yorkie, freshly cooked roast potatoes (not quite crispy enough on the outside but sufficiently joyful), friendly service, decent enough beer, sunshine in the garden, 100 cute dogs…oh and the BBQ beef brisket was as sensational as any proper BBQ joint in London. My score was an 8.72. Had the roasties been banging or the vegetables a little more interesting…it might have been the best ever.

Nor did I expect a Benidorm-style lass shouting “let’s be ‘aving ya” into the microphone during a dog show. But I guess that’s the beauty of my adventures through London. Long may they continue.

Thanks for reading.

Go on…one more Trump medal meme…