Roast Dinners in London

Whoa we’re going to Ibiza…actually, no we were going to Shoreditch. Kind of similar. William IV in Shoreditch.

Phew and there was me worrying that Ibiza has lost it’s way, but don’t worry, STAGMAN has our backs. Sounds wonderfull and so joyfull.

Speaking of gloriously, sorry, gloriouselly sunny islands, isn’t everything fantastic at moment in London?

It’s hot, it’s sunny, it’s possibly the best summer in years, Sadiq Khan has been knighted, as has Gareth SouthGREAT (remember him?) and I’ve even had a match on a dating app for the first time in 87 years.

I’m in such a beautiful, sorry, STAGMAN…beautifull mood that I just want to be really positive.

Eeeeeee by gum.

The Reform Act of 1832

Yes, I went for a roast dinner with someone from Yorkshire, and this was the first time they joined one, and yes, this was the Yorkshire pudding.

By the way, do you know how people in Leeds have recently started taking ecstacy?

Eeeeeee by gum.

So I guess you know where this review is going, but let’s take a moment to appreciate the beauty of the island of Ibiza.

I don’t wear shirts, but if I did, I would buy shirts with more than one button.

I also don’t wear cobweb bras with a hoop that attaches a cobweb skirt, but if I did, I would buy cobweb bras with multiple hoops.

And…I don’t wear silky silver tops…hang on…isn’t he the 65 year old bloke that always has loads of young women with little clothing on, hanging around him?

Ahhh ASOS never lets me down.

Seriously, do I buy it for my date? I’ve not been on one since I talked about Brexit most of the night.

Whoa, what’s happened to ASOS? There’s only one man’s skirt on the website, and even that’s unisex.

Fucking JD Vance ruining fashion.

William IV And The People’s Roast

Like, if I was really hot (I’m definitely not, note the 337 roast dinners) and had money to waste (erm, maybe…read this blog), I would be up for turning up to dates in weird fucking clothing to see reactions.

Hey babe, fancy coming back to mine for some ice cream?

OMG his and hers co-ords…I soooooo need to get to 6th date status.

Anyway, I was dressed normally (well, abnormally shorter shorts but it’s summer so fuck homophobes like Victor Orban), and it was roasting hot, and I was in such a good mood and ready for a beautiful roast dinner.

The manager of William IV messaged me a while back, well a year or so ago to basically say, “hey we’ve sorted out kitchen out, please put us on your radar”.

I like Shoreditch, so I didn’t need too much persuasion, and behold only 18 months later I was visiting with a long-time reader (people reading this drivel once is astounding, let alone regularly) for our first roast dinner together.

They’ve even made it to Time Out’s best roast dinner list, though what credo you give that is another matter, OFFICIALLY.

No More Rotten Boroughs, More Rotten Potatoes

It was hot inside, and even hotter upstairs where the dining room was, which consisted of us two on one table, and approximately 158 very loud children on another table.

If my future wife is reading, I would like to re-assure you that I love the cacophony of children’s voices, it was just the slight hangover talking. And obviously I’ll give up drinking at some point in my life. Darling.

Options on the menu were beef rump at £24.50, fennel and rosemary (apparently) porchetta at £22.50, lemon and thyme chicken breast at £21.00, hispi cabbage and celeriac puree at £19.50 (sorry but totally not sorry to my future vegan wife) and, yeah fuck sharing roasts on a hot day.

I’m not really a beef rump fan, I feel like I’ve eaten chicken all 11 days of this week, so porchetta it was.

Good to see I wasn’t the only thing that had been enjoying the heat this weekend.

Well, let’s start with the one vegetable that you can see (and the one possibly cooked the same day, though I stress the word “possibly”) which were the leeks, which were peppery and soft, a tad buttery though perhaps that is a tad generous.

Next up were the carrots, which were OK, but had probably been roasted the day before and were very uninspiring – one was a bit tough, the other not so much.

And the parsnips were shite. Definitely cooked at least the day before, if not before the Paleolithic Age, these were the driest fucking parsnips in the history of roast dinner review mankind. I didn’t eat them and I’m from Yorkshire. My accomplice didn’t eat them and he’s from Yorkshire. Even Kneecap wouldn’t eat them when they are imprisoned for upsetting middle class wankers like me.

William IV Would Have Dissolved This Gravy

It didn’t get much better.

So you can see that there were crispy outsides, but alas, the chef apparently cooked them before he went on holiday to Ibiza last week.

You know, I imagine William IV would be up for Ibiza, had it been around in his day – apparently known as “Silly Billy”. This is where I’d like to put one of my Ibiza stories in, but I might hold back on that – I did find a photograph of myself hugging a frying pan in Ibiza, on Facebook the other day, from like 17 years ago (FML) and well…yeah…use your imagination. Now deleted. Very deleted.

I am never going to be an MP.

Anyway, these roast potatoes were dry as fuck too, and really rather stale. Maybe half a point for them actually being crispy, but like, yesterday’s crispy.

So. Insert expletives. The Yorkshire pudding was turd. Fucking turd. Properly burnt, sat under a heat lamp since the chef went to Ocean Beach in Ibiza, hopefully doing bags of rock salt that he’s bought off some dodgy bloke on the beach, hoping it is MDMA.

It was inedible, and tasted of pure burntness.

The crackling on the porchetta was actually pretty amazing, if you just think about the crispy gooey state, and forget about how salty it was. Otherwise, well, it was fucking salty and the inners were just pure globs of fat, but also there was a reasonable joint of pork in there.

And the gravy was salty, probably granules and definitely watery.

William IV. And Hopefully The Last…Pub.

11th best roast dinner according to Time Out. OFFICIALLY. Also in Hoxton, according to Time Out. OFFICIALLY.

311th best roast dinner (ish) according to Lord Gravy. Who you gonna believe? OFFICIALLY?

We did actually kind of un-Britishly mention some of the problems to our waiter, who was very apologetic and offered free dessert. Neither of us wanted dessert.

Service was friendly, at least upstairs, and they actually had some good beers on – both a Verdant and some Siren beers, which I did enjoy. Plus some outdoor seating in the sun. So William IV isn’t without positives, and I’d happily go back for beers if I was in the area.

And, maybe the chef was actually on holiday, and they had a bad week. They happen, I also fucked up at work recently. But alas, I only experienced a fuck-up of a roast dinner. A truly burnt yorkie, dry as fuck parsnips, dry as fuck roasties, most things were old and even the half-decent elements like the porchetta were salty.

The more I write, the more I loathe it. My accomplice scored his a 5.50, despite leaving far more of it than I did.

I’m lower, much lower – my score is a pretty awful 4.75 out of 10. Sorry, STAGMAN, I mean awfull. This really was a turd of a roast dinner, I’m afraid. Fuck knows what Time Out’s 12th best roast dinner is like. Oh actually, I moaned about that one too.

No Blacklock on their list either.

Next weekend I’m going for a roast dinner recommended by Londonist. That is actually the case.