Roast Dinners in London

WAR. WATFORD. WELCOME, to the roast dinner review of The Royal Oak in Watford.

War…what is it good for…watching this classic clip from The Day Today, of course. Soooooo far ahead of the times.

As were many of the MAGA gangsters in warning about war in Iran:

WAIT. Speaking of reasons to go to war…is Watford even in London?

Maybe let’s ask some Americans…

With apologies to my American readers, who I assume are mostly in the 23% due to their intelligence in choosing to read such a publication, educating themselves on the often tragic tale of locating the best roast dinners in London.

But Watford doesn’t come under the London Mayor. Yet it is in the M25. It doesn’t have a borough of London. But it is on overground and tube lines.

My blog anyway, so fight each other about it.

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So I had a message from a chef a year ago, “The Royal Oak Watford heath has an unreal slow roasted lamb shoulder and a veal bone jus to die for” from someone called Chef Mikey, relating a pub which the year before had been taken over by two people, one of whom is called Michael.

Yeah, my first thought was “Watford…insert pained face emoji”.

Yeah, that kind of level of pain – and of course my journey planner was replete with multiple train cancellations just to throw in a few extra obstructions to my day, not to mention aching feet from having done 30,000 steps the day before, accidentally, along with it being the first day of Dry March (in this country only).

It was two hours door to door. For a roast dinner. Damn those roasties better be decent.

The Royal Oak is a nice looking pub, both inside and outside – slightly low ceilings and it created kind of a homely vibe inside, almost like a front room.

It being Dry March I didn’t study the beer selection, but I noticed they had some cask so there is hope it’s decent on that front – and the drinks menu in general was extensive, there was a fair selection of non-alcoholic drinks.

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And the food menu?

Roasts were a mixture of rib-eye and sirloin for £25.00, slow roasted lamb shoulder for £24.00, slow roasted pork belly for £23.00 or mushroom, butternut, oat and lentil roast for £19.00. Maybe the journey might be worth it?

I went for the lamb shoulder, pretty much just because it was highlighted in green, green means go (or possibly means gangrene hands if you are an old man that definitely wasn’t friends with Epstein and is a peace prize holder) so why would you choose anything else?

Notably the table next to us ordered chips with their roast dinner. Is that how they do things in Watford?

Yep, a proper looking roast dinner – you can tell that I’m not in Chelsea or Kensington this weekend. By the way, is Tony Blair still Middle East Peace Envoy? Maybe time to give him a call.

So starting with the carrots, these were nicely roasted, quite on the soft side.

Parsnips were also on the soft side, one very much so – almost as fluffy as inside a roast potato. I do mean this as a compliment, plus the favour of the parsnips were top notch too. Other correspondents reported red onion – but nothing on my plate.

The greens seemed to be a mixture of savoy cabbage and rainbow chard (first time on a roast?) – the former a tad too wet and the latter a tad too crunchy, but perfectly serviceable, and worked well with the gravy. You’ll hear more about the gravy. Well, you will if you have an app that verbally reads out web pages to you. So maybe you’ll read more about the gravy.

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Complimentary so far…but we are at roast potato stage.

And they were very fluffy inside – alas, the outsides were rather chewy – no crispiness going on, at least of the golden crumb variety, a bit of toughness perhaps. That said, they tasted great with the gravy.

Oh and in case you were wondering, the chips on the neighbouring table looked sooo good. Maybe the locals know what they are doing. And, no, they didn’t eat all their roast potatoes.

Also the Yorkshire pudding was, well, crap. Burnt to the bottom and tough to cut – you could tell they would have been decent had they not been significantly overcooked. Even the gravy couldn’t quite rescue it.

Thankfully back to compliments for the meat – the lamb shoulder was pretty tender, which you’d expect for something slow-cooked, there was quite a lot of it, a tiny little bit of fat to give a bit of extra flavour. Though I have to say the flavour did pale a bit into insignificance compared to the beef, which I tried – and was envy-inducing. I didn’t try the pork belly, but I’m told it was really nice, the crackling was excellent.

Finally, the gravy – and it will be a contender for gravy of the year once the FIFA Peace Prize Winner for 2026 has been announced, though I probably won’t get around to writing them until the next winner has started at least a couple of wars.

Thick, proper gravy (probably because I was so far up north) – really quite an impactful flavour to it. Apparently veal bone, but I cannot say I can tell between different types of bones despite being Lord Gravy. I can tell you this gravy was superb.

The Royal Oak in Watford

Gosh imagine if the roasties and yorkie had been to the standards of everything else – it would go onto the list of great roast dinners that nobody is ever going to go to because it is too fat away, like The Larkshall in Chingford or The Railway in Teddington.

Yet this gravy does have to be sampled. If you can make it to Watford (nearest station was Bushey) then I still think The Royal Oak in Watford is worth a visit. And if you are reading from the area – then you have no excuses. Maybe order some chips.

The roasted vegetables were also really good, as was the meat. Even the inside of the roast potatoes were good – really fluffy, just the chewy outsides of the roast potatoes, and the well overcooked yorkie that let it down.

I should probably also mention the £3.50 charge for extra gravy – I feel this is becoming the new service charge, and I’m just going to have to suck it up and stop moaning about being charged for extra gravy, but also it probably should be mentioned somewhere. Maybe it was listed on the menu, but I didn’t recall noticing. Though with gravy that good…I cannot say I begrudge the extra charge.

All healthy scores around the table, a 7.80 from the pork-eating accomplice, a 7.70 from my regular accomplice with the beef, and a 7.71 out of 10 from myself.

The Royal Oak in Watford is the kind of pub I really wish I had local to me.

I’ll be back next week…going to a chain that has served me more disappointment than joy, but I’m told this place does a really good roast. We shall see.

When am I getting my FIFA veganism prize?