Roast Dinners in London

It’s time to unveil The Roasteds 2025.

You’ve read the awards for the best roast dinners in London for 2025, now it’s time to turn my attention to those pubs and restaurants which really made some of those 1.5 hour journeys each way into the varying corners of London, really, truly worthwhile.

Where served the most burnt Yorkshire pudding? Where was the most disgusting gravy? Who served the outright worst roast dinner of 2025 – and which pub decided to replicate the taste of The North Sea?

And where possible, I’ve managed to find a guest to help present the awards. Quick AI diclaimer – 99.5% of this is my writing, but I’ve used ChatGPT in a few places to make the quotes from said morons a bit more realistic.

Starting with something really dear to my heart:

The Stray Pea

Those of us who were brought up in Kingston-Upon-ULL would have been made aware of our career options, as we vandalised our way through school.

The pea factory was going to be my destiny. Instead…my life took a turn out of ULL, down south and I shudder at the thought of a pea on my plate. You cannot trust peas – they have a lack of discipline. All other foods will remain in their corner…but peas, they sneakily roll around.

And those reason are why Lord Gravy has proclaimed there to be no peas on my roast dinners. Ever.

Except at The Railway in Teddington, an otherwise excellent roast dinner – to whom I had explained my situation. Yet there were still a few stray peas in the cabbage.

Unless…you are Karoline Leavitt, “What you are reading here is a radical garnish narrative pushed by the radical, liberal, woke roast-dinner media. There are no peas on this plate. There are no peas hidden within the cabbage. There have never been peas.

And quite frankly, I find Lord Gravy to be wholly un-British. His conduct is disgraceful, his jus is divisive, and his continued obsession with imaginary vegetables proves he is part of a coordinated anti-roast propaganda effort.

Frankly, he should go back to Hull, reflect on what he’s done, and stop attacking honest, traditional roasts with these baseless pea allegations.”.

Well…

Worst Plate

The award for worst plate comes sponsored by Suella Braverman – the kind of woman who (after robust border checks at the door) would provide as little hospitality as she could possibly get away with, with the darkest, smallest most awkward plate – preferably eaten in the confines of a dingy container ship at sea.

And if she ever tragically gets into a position of power again, maybe she can employ the procurer of such plates at The Candlemaker in Battersea:

A roast dinner in a black, bowl-like plate. It wasn’t even a good roast dinner – the only thing not worthy of being on such a miserable, dark plate was the beef.

Plus the music being played was so depressing, if you were seeking asylum, you’d go back to France. Suella would be proud.

It’s not the last time that you’ll see this plate, but the roast wasn’t quite shit enough for any of the really desirable awards in The Roasteds 2025 such as worst Yorkshire pudding.

Do You Want Me In Your Venue

I entered the Tulse Hill Hotel one Sunday, only to be greeted by who appeared to be Kier Starmer working behind the bar.

“Can I get a pint of IPA, and a roast dinner please”.

“Just to let you know that we are only doing the full 3 course menu for Father’s Day”.

“But I don’t want a starter or dessert”.

Keir Starmer then went on to explain that he believes deeply in inclusivity, and that I was technically welcome to have a drink, subject to availability and appropriate glassware, but that the committee had made a values-based decision that they would only be serving three-course meals that Sunday.

This policy, he clarified, was arrived at after careful consideration of operational capacity, committee standards, Father’s Day optics, inter-generational dining outcomes and a forward-looking assessment of whether allowing à la carte roasts might undermine the integrity of the celebratory framework for Father’s Day.

He stressed that this was not a ban, merely a structured exclusion, and that while my presence was acknowledged, my appetite did not align with the agreed service model for the day.

I did eventually get a roast dinner there, u-turn if you want to but the gravy’s not for turning…or something like that. Is there even anywhere else in Tulse Hill to have a roast dinner?

Might have been better if Kier hadn’t u-turned.

Ugliest

The women of Tinder might suggest that yours truly is the more appropriate sponsor of the award for the ugliest roast dinner of 2025, however I’ve just had words with the manager of DHS in Ohio, and there is a new sponsor:

Yes, the man who is prompting civilisational suicide to sofas would greatly admire this attempt at a truly ugly roast dinner, preferably not whilst sat at a table though.

The Candlemaker in Battersea didn’t offer a good roast dinner in any way – they’ve already bagged the award for worst plate.

But does anything look appealing?

The rib of beef was the only thing on the plate worth eating – but even that looks ugly. Anaemic vegetables, ugly roasties and a spherical yorkie. Maybe fucking a sofa really would be more pleasurable than that.

Empty Plate

The Empty Plate Award is presented to you by our greatest ever Prime Minister, whose bold and visionary leadership was cruelly cut short by the woke Bank of England blob, the anti-growth coalition, and forces fundamentally hostile to both prosperity and properly funded gravy.

Here to present the award to The Camberwell Arms, a gastropub which truly shows how an absence of food means freedom – not failure.

Fighting against outdated concepts such as variety on a roast dinner, and being over-burdened with food.

What there was on this roast dinner was very good – but also it’s a joke to offer just one huge carrot as the vegetables.

She hasn’t even got a fucking knighthood yet. That is a…yeah you know…disgrace.

Most Painful Experience

You know when you go into a pub, and stand next to the bar waiting for a seat to become available, and then that happens…the pub bore catches your eyes and starts banging on about immigrants, and with absolutely no sense of irony then tells you a story about how he wasn’t allowed on an island himself.

And then he starts banging on about Europe, despite having a European wife, having had an exceptionally well-paid job in Europe and now a fabulous pension from a European organisation.

All whilst pretending he’s a man of the people, yet really he’s a bit of a toff, and is always spending his time on holiday, on jaunts to the US – instead of doing his “man of the people” job?

You know when you go into a pub, and stand next to the bar waiting for a seat to become available, and then that happens…a table becomes available but somebody walks through the door and straight onto the table before you can get there.

Yeah the Audley Public House wins this award, for there is no booking system, it’s just a case of standing around, waiting, hoping – then being quicker than whoever else is there to the table.

It’s a real pain in the arse. Banging roast potatoes but not banging enough to be worth the stress of this being on your to-do list.

What The Fuck Is This Doing On A Roast Dinner

“I think you’ll find that biscuit is a perfectly acceptable vegetable to add to one’s Sunday roast, and it was very common in the 1780’s for those more landed of folks to add biscuit”.

Rightio, Jacob.

“The tyranny of orthodoxy must not dictate the boundaries of one’s luncheon. If a gentleman wishes to deploy a biscuit in pursuit of gravy containment, who are we to interfere?”.

So the Tulse Hill Hotel supplied some form of biscuit with the roast dinner.

How?

Why?

Why the fuck did we leave the EU? Yes I am blaming Brexit for this – just think, I could be campaigning for the roast dinner to become a protected characteristic under EU law, like Parmesan, Champagne and Lincolnshire Sausages are (or were for the latter).

It wasn’t actually that bad, my guess was that it was suet and sage stuffing, though some dipping gravy would have been good.

Props (of sorts) also to The Red Lion in Kennington for a pile of grey sludge that we never worked out the point of.

Worst Vegetables

“You’re told the veg is ‘good for you.’ You’re told to stop asking questions. At some point you begin to wonder: is this really about nutrition?”

“Who in the mainstream media is asking these kind of questions? Why are they trying so hard to make you eat this? And is Donald Trump the true saviour of roast dinners, and Christ rolled into one?”

“Find out tonight on the Tucker Carlson show.”

Thanks, Tucker – but there are some places trying hard for you to not eat vegetables. Ruff’s Bistro provided a decent roast, but the parsnip was vastly overcooked, burnt and inedible. Bravo.

The Old Red Cow seemingly didn’t want us to eat anything, given the plate of miserable crud they served to us, including raw-looking carrots and uber-basic vegetables.

However, there’s a clear winner of worst vegetables of 2025:

Yep, you see peas. You see red cabbage. GET OFF MY PLATE.

With congratulations to The White Horse in Brixton for their contract to provide the food for Tucker Carlson’s wedding.

Taxing Those Northerners

Yay, change!

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Oh, maybe not. Well it’s probably time to change Prime Minister, we’ve had the same one for nearly two years.

I remember those heady times. Change was coming. We were going to have economic stability. More money magically appearing for public services, without increasing tax or borrowing. It would just magically appear because Labour nice Tory bad.

Yet what is happening on the ground?

NORTHERNER TAX.

Pub after pub, restaurant after restaurant, are now all adding a northerner tax – despite Rachel Reeves not mentioning anything about this in the manifesto.

Outback really were the more notable and hence award-winning outfit for taxing those northerners, not only wasn’t the gravy charge mentioned on the menu, it wasn’t mentioned when we ordered extra gravy – then I received a diatribe from the owner of the pub for daring to mention in in the review…a review which was full of praise. Except for the northerner tax.

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Is This A Cake?

Tell me, Ms Badenoch, is this a cake or is this a Yorkshire pudding?

“Your question, Lord Gravy, is divisive, and your problem is one fitting society in that you are trying to labelise everything”.

“Questioning whether this is a Yorkshire pudding or not, brings into doubt the lived experience of a sponge. You should know better than that, Lord Gravy”.

OK, these sponsors are getting more tenuous as I go along, but I promise at least a couple of them might end up funnier than a Yorkshire pudding that has the texture of a sponge.

And the award for this goes to…The Connaught Grill. £79.00 gets you a sponge instead of a Yorkshire pudding.

North Sea Award

“Friends…brothers…seekers of truth within the roast dinner paradigm, what we witnessed at The William IV pub in Shoreditch was not just a salty roast dinner, but a culinary consciousness manipulated by powerful forces that only I can understand”.

Yep, the North Sea Award goes to The William IV in Shoreditch, who provided a roast dinner of multiple levels of shite, but in particular the pork belly was fucking ridiculously salty, topped with salty gravy, probably granules and definitely watery.

Yeah, you cannot see how salty it is.

“You’ve been told this saltiness is just ‘seasoning’…but friends, and future lovers, I invite you to ask a deeper question: who benefits from the sodium?”.

Gravy Shortage

Speaking of morons who have rape allegations against them (innocent until proven guilty…preferably by social media), you know who is presenting the award for gravy shortage?

Yep, chest-thumping colossus of a paragon of manliness, Andrew Tate.

“REAL MEN DON’T NEED GRAVY”.

Well, that’s me told. Perhaps Origin were channelling their inner Andrew Tate and telling me to man up (wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been told this, including even by a first date last year) by providing such a small amount of gravy.

Oh and the gravy boat you see? That was for two people.

Worst Roast Potato

The roast potato should be a thing of beauty – golden, crispy on the outside – fluffy on the inside, cooked on the same fucking day. They should be the elixir of life, as joyfully re-affirming as fellatio.

Likewise, billionaires should be on top of the world, enjoying their monetary rewards for solving some of humanity’s greatest problems, and being uber-satisfied with themselves, heralded by the public for doing so.

Alas, the world isn’t quite like that – roast potatoes come soft on the outside and hard on the inside, billionaires come miserable, sometimes racist and/or anti-human, and often having created humanity’s problems. Sure, not all roast potatoes, and not all billionaires.

A few need calling out – less than in 2024, but still too many. The Prince in Wood Green supplied one which was quite tough inside but I guess acceptable – the other was utterly turgid, very much of the cooked yesterday vibe.

The Whippet Inn in Kensal Rise provided ones which actually looked the bomb, but they were shite the previous Sunday when they were first roasted, and were even shiter that Sunday once they had been re-roasted.

Bar & Block served ones straight from the freezer bag. One felt plastic, the others like a sponge. What fresh hell was that about?

Yet the winner, and it could have been any of the previous ones to be honest, is William IV in Shoreditch – congratulations and thanks for roast potatoes that were dry as fuck, and really rather stale. What week had they been cooked in?

Annoyingly they didn’t look that bad at first glance.

Worst Yorkshire Pudding

Whilst the roast potato situation arguably improved in 2025, the Yorkshire pudding situation went from bad to worse to worst.

You could say it was all puff, no substance and a lot of sunburn, a bit like Tommy Robinson, who is here to present this award.

Is he fuck, he’s in the US driving his fast cars and snorting cocaine that he bought with his “Save Tommy” fund that gullible morons contribute to.

So there’s a big long list here before I get to the truly deserved winner, Out-back in Hackney with their duffer, The Candlemaker’s was tough and like cardboard in texture, Ruff’s Bistro served a cow pat where the burnt bits tasted burnt, the non-burnt bits tasted dry and floury.

More? More. The Duke of Wellington’s was burnt, overcooked and totally dried out like a Quaver too. All the crimes in one. The Prince served a burnt yorkie. FOWL served one notably cold and dried-out.

The Westbourne served one that tasted of…fish. Aha. Yet the winner is a true delight:

It’s another award for William IV – as you can tell from the photo (this time) it was absolutely fucking turd. It truly was inedible, tasted of pure burntness and had the credence of a Tommy Robinson speech.

Shit Meat

For the shit meat award, I had to enlist someone with a true appreciation for discipline, tough meat, traditional masculinity and commitment to a vodka bottle under the desk – Pete Hegseth.

Yep, the US Secretary For Bombing Schools War who is as fucking braindead as some of the meat served to me in 2025.

Let’s start with The White Horse in Brixton, who served pork belly cooked from some prior day (week?), brick-hard crackling and half-dried out meat.

William IV (yep them again) served the saltiest meat of the year, like disgustingly so, but the crackling was actually amazing, so they aren’t winning this award.

Bar & Block served me something that I don’t even know if it really was chicken – texturally it didn’t feel like chicken. It tasted of a dirty grill plate. It looked like it was from 1998.

The porchetta at The Hare & Billet was burnt. But do you know what is worse than burnt pork?

Burnt pork belly on your birthday roast!

Fuck you to The George on The Strand, who were a top 5 roast dinner, but when I went back for my birthday, served me burnt pork belly. ON LORD GRAVY’S BIRTHDAY.

I actually sent it back, and I never send food back – I always feel when reviewing, that I should endure every piece of grimness so I can get this across to my dear readers. The second piece served was non-burnt, but dry.

Worst Gravy

People come up to me all the time and say, “Sir, this is incredible gravy, far better gravy that Obama ever made”.

So the only oxymoron with having Donald Trump present the award for best gravy, is that being thick is actually celebrated criteria, but hey.

Bar & Block served what may be the most flavourless gravy anyone has ever encountered. Truly incredible. People came up to me afterwards – very serious roast dinner people — and they said, “Sir, how can gravy have absolutely no flavour?” And I said, believe me, they’ve found a way.

The Candlemaker offered a very salty gravy, the kind of saltiness that tells you immediately: granules, big granules, everybody knows it. Probably vegetarian gravy too, which some people like, I guess, but it tasted like nothing else. Just salt. Tremendous salt.

At The Old Red Cow we had an onion gravy – or at least that’s what they called it – but again you had that unmistakable granule situation going on. You know the one. That salty aftertaste that stays with you for hours. Nobody likes that. Terrible.

The Old Red Lion in Kennington served what can only be described as Bisto-style gravy. Not good gravy. But I will say this – and I’m a very fair person, very beautiful, very wise – at least it was thick. A lot of these places don’t even give you thickness anymore.

William IV’s gravy was salty, watery, and almost certainly granules. A lot of granules happening in 2025. Nobody’s talking about it, but they should be. Very weak gravy performance.

But the winner…

The Prince produced something that barely qualifies as gravy. Very watery. Very sad. Not even enough granules to give it a fighting chance. Frankly, I’ve seen stronger liquids in a glass of tap water at the care home I should really be in.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.

Worst Roast Dinner

You thought it was over. You thought he had left us alone. You thought the lying was over.

Yet I’ve been lying to you since 2017.

Bar & Block scored an 8.34 when I visited in 2017, though I’d long suspected that not only had I overrated it (early days on the blog/didn’t realise I had a wife/covid is just a cold) but it had gone downhill.

That would never get an 8.34 nowadays.

Though it was a fuck ton better than what I received in my 2025 re-visit – ladies, gentlemen and alternative genders from prior to 2025, this is the worst roast dinner in London of 2025:

Did you just say, “what the fuck is that”?

So the chicken was tasteless reconstituted 1990’s pub grill shite, gravy flavourless, potatoes plastic or soggy, and the vegetables all pretty damp too.

And that’s The Roasted 2025. Well done for making it this far.