Sunday roasts worth the walk
The London Sunday roasts worth leaving the flat for: the pub gravy boat, the restaurant beef trolley, the neighbourhood regular. A Vivi shortlist, opinionated.
The London Sunday roast has, in the last decade, become a separate sport. There are four broad categories: the grand-restaurant trolley (Hawksmoor, Blacklock), the pub gravy boat (The Anchor and Hope, The Quality Chop House), the Italian-adjacent Sunday lunch (Trullo, Sessions Arts Club), and the hipster pop-up.
The short list
- Hawksmoor - the best pub-Sunday-roast in restaurant form. The trolley, the beef, the goose-fat potatoes.
- Blacklock Shoreditch or Covent Garden - the £26 all-in Sunday roast. Impossible to beat on value.
- The Anchor and Hope, Waterloo - pub, no bookings, queue early. The platonic ideal.
- Trullo, Highbury - the Italian answer to a Sunday roast. A pasta starter, a roast, an olive-oil cake.
- The Quality Chop House, Farringdon - for a slower, restaurant-style Sunday.
When to arrive
13:00 or 19:00. Avoid 14:30; it is the slot the kitchen dreads, and you can tell.
What to drink
A half of bitter, a glass of Beaujolais, a proper martini at the end. Do not order a cocktail with a roast.
Nathaniel Ashford
Senior contributing editor
Nathaniel Ashford writes about bars, cocktails, pubs and the London neighbourhoods that hold them together. A former drinks-trade journalist, he now contributes a weekly cocktail column for Vivi and leads the Vivi Neighbourhoods series.
He knows more about vermouth than is strictly respectable. Based in Fitzrovia; generally found two doors down from wherever he is supposed to be.