Roast Dinners in London

This week I’m reviewing The Salusbury in Queen’s Park. Yes, it is really spelt like that.

There isn’t really an in to this review – it’s still a week too early to bring out the Christmas porn that I cannot access because like fuck am I giving a copy of my passport to PornHub.

Over on X though…

Ah freely accessibly porn on the internet…maybe Elon Musk does have his uses…or a use.

Also there isn’t anything that substantial to rant about this week that I don’t think I’ve covered multiple times before.

Yeah, I’m just in that “need to get through this” kind of stage of pre-Christmas, going out too much, enjoying life too much and feeling rough too much. And there isn’t much brain power left to come up with an introduction.

Even the roast dinner wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that good either, so let’s not get too excited. There are things to to talk about there.

Totnam Court Road

So you probably think the pub name has been misspelt, but apparently there was a Lady Sarah Salusbury back in the days before schooling was a thing, and hence being able to write properly and stuff – I probably would have been known as Lord Groovy back then.

Oh and The Salusbury is on Salusbury Road. When I die, they will name a road Gravy Street, right?

Anyway, it’s quite a pretty pub from the outside, and I took a crap photograph of it later in the day. Damn fine font there.

The inside was pleasant too, white walls with some art and decoration on – it felt modern and clean, and it has recently been refurbished.

Alas, the craft beer taps were hidden at the back, so I kind of sighed as I looked through the ordinary beers, though settled for a pint of Leffe, which worked well with my hungover state.

Wine worked even better, with a bottle of Cotes Du Rhone having a fruity yet punchy touch – and a relief of the wine menu being just two pages, after the 118-page menu last week at The Connaught Grill.

Paddingten

On the menu was chicken at £26.00, porchetta at £26.00, beef strip loin at £29.00 or pumpkin at £18.00. Very occasionally I can be tempted to think about ordering vegan/vegetarian roasts, and this absolutely was not the case. Pumpkin. Lol.

Also it’s nice to see kids roasts being offered, though obviously kids are not allowed vegan options.

I’m going to start with the kale, as it was kind of utterly pointless. I like kale, it’s underrated – but I like it to have some flavour, having been cooked in garlic, or at least some seasoning.

There was nothing here – it had literally just been boiled (or similar) briefly. No taste. Meh.

The carrot looked pretty – The Salusbury is the kind of joint that has “pretty” pretty much nailed, but again something was missing – the carrot itself wasn’t especially flavoursome in carrottyness, but also no seasoning, no honey, no maple syrup – nada. Also kind of wet.

But it was fine, otherwise.

Southwork

I quite liked the cauliflower cheese, but I don’t get much past “quite”. It felt like blanched cauliflower with a cheese sauce on top, of which was cheesy but also quite sweet.

The roast potatoes were pretty damn good. They seemed like they’d had some chuffing, they were quite fluffy inside, quite crispy on the outside – not quite award-winning but very good roast potatoes. If a tad oily.

If only roast potatoes were now a solved problem. If only 2026 would bring me roast potatoes of this quality as the norm.

Again I only ate half of the Yorkshire pudding, despite it being only moderately large. I’ve eaten a lot recently – including half a Pukka Pies sausage roll at Millwall FC the day before, which was as grim as you might imagine.

Anyway, the yorkie was kind of cold but also on the fluffy side. So my not eating it was more my lack of interest rather than a lack of quality in the yorkie.

I’m showing you the beef first, which one of my accomplices ordered – just one slice. For £29.00. Apparently it had flavour and seasoning, but wasn’t epic, and far too much fat on the edge for said accomplice (though I would have gorged on the fat).

At least the one slice of porchetta was thick.

So the porchetta was a mixed bag – the pork itself was dry and on the cold side, the crackling was gooey gorgeous with a fair amount of crunch, and the stuffing had a fennel flavour, which I really enjoyed.

Finally, the gravy was rather on the watery side but also did taste of meat stock. Very little came with the roast so we had to order more, I didn’t notice whether we were charged for extra.

The Salusbury

And that is that. A fairly simple piece to read this week as I’m tired and had to rush this a bit, with far too much to do this week at work, and also Christmas pressure is here in many respects.

Not so simple to score, as it wasn’t straight-forwardly good or bad. I guess the roast potatoes were the best part, but they were a tad oily. I loved the crackling and stuffing, but the pork was dry.

Vegetables were pretty ordinary and lacking seasoning.

There was craft beer, but it was hidden (you can guarantee I would have seen the sign in Dry January). Wine was very good – service was pleasant too and The Salusbury is a pretty pub. It isn’t one to go out of your way to get to, but if you live in Queens Park, then you should be pretty happy with having The Salusbury in your neighbourhood. It was very busy and one can understand why.

A score of 6.70 from our fairly new accomplice, a 7.10 from my regular accomplice, and I’m going for a 7.01 out of 10 – a score under 7 would feel a tad harsh, but there are some easy improvements to make such as adding a bit of flavour/seasoning to the vegetables.

But then again…they did enforce condiments. There was unwelcome apple sauce slavered over a quarter of the plate. But I’m not feeling cruel.

I’ll be back next Sunday for the Christmas special…or will it be the Epstein Trump files has actually been released special?

I’ll leave you with the cute Milu toy and her thoughts on whether Taiwan is an independent country.

I’M LOSING MY SHIT THIS IS SO FUNNY

— 🔫Scott Martin🛼 (@youcaughtscott.com) 2025-12-11T15:13:57.561Z

Hope you’ve got your children sufficient Chinese government policy indoctrination toys for Christmas.

Oops, another country I cannot get a visa for.

Also:

Yeah you cannot go to USA either now as you’ve been reading this blog.