Roast Dinners in London

Has anyone seen Amber? It was time to go to The Pig’s Ear in Chelsea, to find Amber. And maybe a roast dinner.

I don’t trust pubs/restaurants chasing reviews, do you?

I went to a place in Portugal last year, it was rated a 4.9/5. I had a perfectly pleasant brunch, good in fact, but it wasn’t quite to the level of superlatives on Google Maps.

And when we were paying, in came the offer of 10% off our bill if we could leave a review on Google/TripAdviser. I paid the full amount, of course.

Here I was, on my way to The Pig’s Ear, seeing the good reviews, and seeing how often Amber (and a couple of others though never as often as Amber) were mentioned. My spidey roasty senses were raised a tad.

Maybe this was Amber?

Oh no that’s Jayme Leagh Franklin, a tradwife influencer and now seemingly an advisor on child vaccine policy in the US.

Of course she is.

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I’ve actually reviewed a roast dinner at this same pub many years ago.

It was back in 2019, and I massively over-rated it at a 5.93 out of 10, even if the pork belly was tasty. Quite possibly I’m a harsher critic now, but also the price of a roast dinner has nearly doubled since then, and I’ve run out of patience for roast potatoes made a week ago.

Back then it was called The Chelsea Pig, and since then it has been taken over by The Gladwin Brothers, who also owned two other places I’ve reviewed – I really rated the roast dinner at Sussex Bar & Restaurant in Soho (7th highest score ever) and more recently a re-review of Rabbit.

Hence there was some hope and expectation here.

On the menu was beef sirloin at £29.50, half a chicken at £28.00, pork chop at £28.00, Gregory’s lamb at £28.00 (no mention of Gregory on Google Maps though he could possibly be an anti-reading education minister in the Trump administration) or a courgette, aubergine, peppers and goat’s cheese tart at £22.00, which obviously I didn’t have.

I didn’t fancy a pork chop, lamb I had eaten the Sunday before, chicken I had eaten the day before (yes…fried…yes…late at night) and beef I don’t eat because of the amazing wagyu in Japan has ruined British beef for me.

Except it was the Japan holiday group back together for first time since Osaka…maybe…maybe it was time to re-introduce beef? The waitress studiously avoided deciding for me with a politician’s answer, so beef it was.

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Shall we start with a moan? Of course, and I’m only vaguely going to mention Southern Rail putting on far too few trains on a Sunday and the sardine conditions on the journey there, but also The Pig’s Ear decided that we didn’t need any space either.

For the four-person table was too small for four people to eat, let alone then extending the roast dinner to sharing platter set-ups.

It was a little bit cramped.

Shall we start with what I didn’t eat? Peas. Thankfully in a bowl. Also broad beans – I still have memories of podding broad beans as a child when I wanted to play football, so also similarly problematic but also broad beans taste awful. Fair play to The Pig’s Ear for mixing things up a bit – the roasted radish was sweet and tender (for a radish).

Oh and the bright yellow thing? Not potatoes, which was a relief when they are that pale yellow – we didn’t work out what it was for sure, but it wasn’t too far away from the taste and texture of kohlrabi, though seems a tad too yellow for that?

Onto the carrots – the yellow ones had more bite and crunch to them, the orange ones were particularly silky and soft. Juicy and flavoursome in carroty ways.

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We ordered a side of cauliflower cheese which was, fine, I guess. Quite creamy, not cheesy, the cauliflower being on the soft side but holding together.

Onto the roast potatoes which were CRISPY, with a capital C, and a capital R, and a capital I, and a capital S, and a capital P, and a capital, Y and a capital FUCKING.

Too crispy. Actually too crispy – some a little tired but others quite fresh – there still was quite a bit of satisfaction from eating them, especially the fresher ones but they were quite tough going.

The Yorkshire pudding was quite fluffy in a lazy way, but sadly tasted a bit burnt – and wasn’t enjoyable.

So, for the first time in 3 months, I was eating beef on a roast dinner.

Well, it might be another 3 months before I order it again – not that it was bad, it was just kind of…fine. Maybe bear in mind I was blessed with some stunning wagyu, over and over, in Japan. But also I had amazing fried chicken (and fried everything else) yet still enjoy fried chicken back in the UK.

Just two fairly thin slices for a £29.00 roast dinner seemed a tad tight (3 west London reviews in a row has definitely bumped up the average price I’ve paid this year), it was tender yet also felt ordinary and didn’t taste of much. The fat around the edge was quit chewy. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong, so maybe it’s more a me thing (though also one of two beef-eating accomplices agreed with me) that it just didn’t do much.

Finally, the gravy was fairly limp, a bit oily and again didn’t really add much to the roast.

The Pig’s Ear

A bit of a flat one this week – I think if you’d never had a roast dinner you’d probably be mostly happy. But I have had a few roast dinners.

So along with the logistics of the small table and rather warm venue being a tad uncomfortable, the roast potatoes were far too crispy and the yorkie tasted burnt.

Though I still enjoyed the roast potatoes – a view not shared by other accomplices.

Also the four of us didn’t share similar scores, as there was a variety of scores offered. The lowest score was a 5.00 – the pork too salty though also perhaps the hangover affected scoring, apparently. The highest was a 7.20, who was more appreciative of the beef than I. In the middle was a 6.50 from another accomplice.

My score is a 6.39 out of 10. It’s a reasonable enough roast dinner but nothing shone and there were a couple of things easily improved.

We never found Amber. And nobody asked me to leave a review.

Also a quick note on drinks – there was a good beer selection and the pale ale I had was thoughtfully flavoursome, we also had a glass of Puglian wine – which was a tad fruity yet had a bit of a punch to it – both more satisfying than the roast dinner.

Next Sunday is one of those post-train journey from the north missions, and also is one of those more experimental roast dinners. Someone is definitely going to complain on social media when I post it. Will I be complaining too?

Ludek Stanek 𝕏🔁 @Gr8CanadianFree@twitter.com:She’s called “The Zapper”Presses zapper on her stomach and it zaps Sleepy Don awake

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