Sunday Roast
Looking for a bit of luxury with your Sunday roast? Claridge’s Restaurant delivers it and then some. The menu offers a modern twist on the classics, with starters like ham hock terrine with pickles and brioche, French onion soup, and seabass & crab fishcake with tartare sauce. You’ve got plenty of options for the main event, including Norfolk black leg chicken with truffle stuffing, roasted rib of beef with horseradish purée and Yorkshire pud, porchetta with burnt apple purée, and celeriac & mushroom pithivier. Sides come for the table so you get plenty of roasties, glazed carrots, seasonal greens, cauliflower cheese and gravy too. And if you’ve still got room, indulge in a baked meringue tart or apple crumble with ice cream and custard, served family style. Given it’s the flagship restaurant of a five-star hotel, the service is exceptional – it’s the definition of hospitality – so prepare for a very special Sunday.
BÉBÉ BOB
There’s lots of places to get chicken in London but none are as glamorous as Bébé Bob, the rotisserie chicken-focused spin-off restaurant from Bob Bob Ricard. The Golden Square spot is filled with Art Deco detailing, geometric patterned carpets, a circular bar with a gold granite top, and a red and blue colour scheme. You can’t visit a Bob Bob joint without a glass of champagne (there are no ‘press for champagne’ buttons here though, so you have to ask for it the old fashioned way), which is the perfect accompaniment to classic starters like caviar, egg mayonnaise with anchovy and prawn cocktail. Chicken is at the heart of the menu, with Vendée or Landes birds from France being the main choice you have to make, and it’s served tableside along with the most gorgeous chicken jus – not that you need it because this chicken is seriously juicy and tender. If you’re doing Sunday lunch, you can order up chicken fat roast potatoes, roast carrots and parsnips, sautéed kale, and an indulgent truffle cauliflower cheese on the side, and you won’t wanna miss out on the honey cake for pudding either.
ORIGIN CITY
Opened by the same family team behind wine bar and shop 56 West Smithfield, Farringdon restaurant Origin City is an expression of their love for British fine dining, Scottish produce and the Provençal way of life, with a menu that showcases pasture-to-plate and nose-to-tail dining. All of the meat used at Origin City, including many heritage breeds, comes from the owners’ organic farm in Argyll in Scotland and it’s butchered in house, so whether you go for the Texel lamb, Tamworth pork or Black Angus beef (or all three if you’re feeling particularly hungry/ambitious) for your roast, you can be sure it’s going to be top quality. All the roasts are served with Yorkshire pudding, beef-dripping potatoes, glazed heritage carrots, sprouts and cauliflower cheese, and there’s sticky toffee pudding on the dessert menu so you’ll want to leave room for that too. If you’re looking for somewhere to take your parents for Sunday lunch, Origin City is the spot.
THE CULPEPER
The Culpeper is an East End boozer with a difference. The menu here, for the roast and otherwise, is heavily focused on sustainability and their produce is locally sourced from minimal intervention and regenerative farms. They even get some of the herbs used from their own rooftop garden – it doesn’t get much more local than that. Highlights from the Sunday menu include the burrata, wild nettle, pickled kohlrabi, nuts; broccoli hummus, crispy chickpeas, radish, croutons; bavette, horseradish cream with *that* Pommes Anna; and golden beetroot, mushroom, spinach & onion Wellington for the veggies. Our top tip, save room for dessert.
THE BARING
Islington isn’t lacking in great boozers but there’s always room for more, especially when they’re of the calibre of The Baring. Sustainability, seasonality and provenance are central to the operation here for both the drinks and the food and it’s a superb menu that goes beyond standard gastropub fare by effortlessly incorporating different cultural influences into the dishes. And that’s no different on Sundays, where popular starters from the a la carte menu are joined by roasts like Simmental beef bavette and Yorkshire pudding, Rhug Estate venison with creamed kale, charcoal grilled Vendée chicken with romesco sauce, and a grilled Normande beef rib for two, all served with roasties, hispi cabbage and gravy. And no, it wouldn’t be wrong to get an order of the pub’s epic chips on the side as well.
SUSSEX
Sussex, one of the five London restaurants from the Gladwin Brothers, is bringing a bit of the family’s West Sussex farm to Soho with the ‘Sundays From The Farm’ menu. Filled with wild, foraged and locally grown produce, it’s Sunday lunch done countryside style. For the main event, you can choose between rolled leg of lamb, beef rib on the bone with horseradish caramel jus, Saxon chicken with bread sauce, pork rack with crackling, partridge with liver parfait, and beef wellington, each of which comes loaded with trimmings, including Yorkshire puds, roasties, seasonal veggies and plenty of gravy. Richard Gladwin has curated the Sussex wine list, so you can pair your roast with a juicy vino or banish any of those Sunday morning hangovers with a Sussex Bloody Mary.
ACME FIRE CULT
Acme Fire Cult, the live fire kitchen from Andrew Clarke and Daniel Watkins, is putting its own spin on the classic Sunday roast. Expect grilled and smoked meats, as well as innovative veg-led plates, all designed to be shared feasting-style. Kick things off with a coffee (it’s Sunday morning after all) and by coffee, we of course mean the coffee kombucha (made using next-door neighbour Dusty Knuckle’s coffee grounds) and bourbon cocktail. Then, split some small plates like char siu beetroots, coal roast leeks and cauliflower ‘Aslam’s Butter’-style before diving into the main event: the grilled and smoked meats platter. Inspired by Dalston’s Turkish food culture, this is Acme’s answer to Blacklock’s ‘All In’, featuring a whole lotta meat on bread with delicious dips.
LAGOM
Elliot Cunningham has nailed live-fire cooking with Lagom, which is in residence at Hackney Church Brew Co, and now he’s applying his skills to the Sunday roast. As per the concept’s name, which translates to “just enough” in Swedish, the Sunday roast menu is short and sweet with the choice of smoked chicken, coal roasted beef rump, smoked pork belly and coal roasted celeriac. The meat, perfectly cooked and infused with smoke from the grill, is the real star here and the kitchen knows it because you get an absolute whopping portion – three thick slices of perfectly pink beef and a slab of pork belly, with a crispy crackling top, that’s almost half the plate’s circumference. They come with Lagom’s beloved crispy potatoes, cabbage, carrots, fluffy Yorkshire puddings and gravy, so all you need to add is a fresh pint from the brewery’s taps.
STORY CELLAR
Once the dreary choice on Sunday roast menus everywhere, chicken is now back in a big way, becoming the star of the show in many new restaurants across town. Tom Sellers’ new Story Cellar offers superlative rotisserie chicken on its regular evening menu and it’s also the centrepiece to one of the best Sunday roasts we’ve had in ages. Take a seat up a the kitchen counter to see the chickens slowly rotating in the rotisserie and kick off with some house made charcuterie, pickles and a glass of Gusbourne English fizz to start. Then it’s the main event, a juicy succulent chicken with golden skin, served with some truly excellent crispy roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, carrots, buttered greens, and smashed swede – a perfect substitute for Northerners who like (demand) mashed potatoes with any roast. Beef, pork, and beetroot wellington is all on offer too, but really you’d be mad not to get that chicken. Top marks.
THE JUGGED HARE
The best thing about Sundays? The Sunday roast of course. The Jugged Hare is just the place to go to if you find yourself in the City, bringing London the roast it deserves. The pub serves up the most delicious seasonal game and produce, including Tamworth pork belly and lamb shoulder, all roasted to perfection and served up with a proper massive Yorkshire pudding, duck fat roast potatoes and buttery seasonal vegetables. Not to mention the rotisserie gravy that’ll leave you wanting buckets of it. Make sure you save room for dessert too, because that classic sticky toffee pudding is smothered in butterscotch sauce and comes with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream. An absolute winner.
BOOKING OFFICE 1869
The Booking Office bar at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel re-opened in 2021 as Booking Office 1869 after a pretty exceptional revamp. Originally the St Pancras ticket hall in the 19th century, the space has been reimagined by celebrated French designer Hugo Toro, who has created a Victorian-style winter garden complete with eight-metre tall palm trees, huge pendant lights made from brass leaves and a 22-metre long bar. If that doesn’t sound like the ideal setting for a Sunday roast in London, we don’t know what is. Their three-course lunch is priced at £45 per person and kicks off with the likes of beetroot hummus & sea salt crackers and cured salmon with buttermilk, dill, pickled shallot & seaweed. That’s followed by either roast roll rib-eye, chicken or miso caramel glazed butternut squash – all served with roasted potatoes, carrots, greens & Yorkshire puddings. And to finish off on a high, there are some classic British puds (the likes of brown bread & treacle tart and rice pudding) as well as a cheese option. FYI: expect generous portions.
COAL OFFICE
Coal Office in King’s Cross is all about fusing influences from Jerusalem and London, and that fusion is most clearly showcased through the restaurant’s Jerusalem Sunday Roast. Just like the regular menu, everything on the Sunday menu is designed to be shared and they aim to feed – the starter selection of kubalah (a gorgeous Yemeni brioche), tahini with tomato & schug, labneh & sumac, fennel salad, and the herby, crunchy, yoghurty Nablus Gate salad is larger than most mains. The roast itself is beef, carrots and potatoes, done Middle Eastern style – tender Turkish coffee-braised brisket, Dunkirk harissa carrots and pink fir potatoes drenched in smoked butter – and again, there’s plenty to go around. You can get the first two courses for £30 a per person, which is fantastic value given both the quality and quantity of the food, but it’s worth adding on the dessert of hazelnut ice cream with buckwheat crumble, chocolate & feuilletine for an extra fiver, especially if you like praline. With plenty of counter seating and Middle Eastern pop covers on the stereo, it’s also vibey as well as good value.
THE AUDLEY PUBLIC HOUSE
The Audley Public House is a classic boozer in Mayfair that’s had one hell of a makeover since being taken over by Artfarm (the hospitality arm of Hauser & Wirth). The place is looking absolutely swish, but is still unmistakably a quintessential London pub (although this one does happen to have a ceiling mural by artist Phyllida Barlow). The kitchen is headed up by Jamie Shears and on Sunday there’s a really excellent roast to get stuck into. The produce is top-notch, with some of it even coming from Artfarm’s own farm in Somerset. There are thick slabs of perfectly cooked beef; some of the best roasties we’ve had in a pub; seasonal veg; and a proper rich gravy. There’s also a Yorkshire pud that’s stuffed with short rib – a first for us! Top marks.
TOWNSEND
Townsend, the modern British dining room inside the Whitechapel Gallery, has built a rep for simple, seasonal, quality cooking and it’s something the restaurant is doing all week long thanks to the return of its Sunday lunch. As with the regular menu, which changes regularly according to what produce the kitchen has sourced, the Sunday offering features unfussy but extremely well-executed small plates such as Red Leicester croquettes & pickled walnut ketchup and crispy pig’s head with fennel salad, along with a handful of roast mains, like half a chicken to share between two and roasted lamb leg with carrots, chard, crispy roasties, gravy and green sauce. There are a selection of classic desserts to finish with, including treacle tart with clotted cream and sticky toffee pudding with creme fraiche, which, like everything else that comes out of the kitchen, are so good that you’ll contemplate whether you’ve got room for another round. All in all, a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
THE LANESBOROUGH GRILL
Like everything at The Lanesborough, the Sunday roast is very bougie. From the expertly cooked joints of high-quality beef that are carved at your table from antique trolleys to the Champagne to pair with lunch – everything screams luxury. The set menu is priced at £70 for three courses, starting with the likes of buttermilk fried quail and Lindisfarne oysters, moving onto mains such as roast salt marsh lamb and line caught seabass, and finishing with desserts including a rhum and pecan brownie with praline ice cream and a lemon tart with candied citrus fruit and Earl Grey meringue. And with The Lanesborough Grill’s regency-era-reminiscent interiors, this is definitely one for Sundays when you’re in the mood for something decadent.
TEMPER SHOREDITCH
One of the four branches in London, temper Shoreditch has got the usual trimmings you’d expect from the Soho, Covent Garden and City outposts, but with the first and only temper bar. Located over on Great Eastern Street, they’re still cooking up a menu of tacos, rare breed steaks, bottomless brunches and Sunday roasts in the main dining room, but in a separate room, the dedicated bar stays open later on Thursdays-Saturdays with regular live DJ sets. The drinks list is the same for both areas though, with cocktails made using jams, butters and pickles from the kitchen and a vast selection of mezcal and tequila.
KUDU GRILL
South African-inspired spot Kudu Grill (part of the same fam as Kudu and Smokey Kudu) is all about open-fire cooking on the braai grill and now the classic Sunday roast is getting the SA BBQ treatment. There’s only one roast on the menu but boy is it a good’un, with beef rump cooked over the fire to a perfect medium rare, alongside grilled carrots and broccoli, crispy fingerling potatoes, fondant shallot, an almost souffle-like sweetcorn cake (in place of a Yorkshire pud – it is a South African restaurant after all) and a rich smoked thyme jus. The roast is obvs the main event but you may as well go full hog – or should that be full cow? – by getting the Kalahari spiced biltong and the superb harissa beef tartare topped with crispy shallots to start, and the less beefy but no less tasty burnt cream ganache with malt ice cream & coffee to finish.
THE LAUNDRY
Brixton’s The Laundry is serving up some of the most classic Sunday roasts available to us in London, and you know how much we love a roast. Here, you can find classic cuts served with all the trimmings you need, including crispy roasties, minted peas, glazed carrots, seasonal squash and gravy. You can knock it up a level with an array of sides like sautéed greens and cauliflower cheese with sage & truffle gratin – if you have any sense, you’ll order the latter.