It was once a commonly held belief that if you lived in Zone 2 or further spiralling outwards, you’d be mad to travel into Central London on the weekend. Like many, our sentiment towards Zone 1 during our downtime has somewhat changed lately. Working from home has made the chaos and carnage of ‘Central’ seem suddenly appealing, and we’re increasingly keen to leave our neighbourhoods on the weekends in search of some bustle.
Because home isn’t always where the heart is, and if you’re looking for the latter part of your weekend to be spent dining out on what is traditionally the homeliest meal, then it’s worth making the journey central for some of the best roast dinners in London. Here you’ll find some marvellous meat-centric restaurants and Michelin-starred chefs serving up proper roasts with proper gravy and crispy spuds that weren’t cooked several hours prior.
With all that in mind, here’s our roundup of the best Sunday Roasts in and around Soho.
Temper Soho
Ideal for a smoky, BBQ roast in a lowlit spot with cool vibes…
You probably know Temper as a barbecue joint with something of a cult following. Its Soho outpost on Broadwick Street is known specifically for its Mexican influenced menu, where taco dishes rub shoulders with prime cuts of steak. However, come Sundays its vast basement space gets filled up with punters looking for a long, languid lunch of the roast variety.
On this sacred day of rest, the attention of the open-fire-pit kitchen changes to the roasting and the smoking of meats traditionally associated with British Sunday Lunch. Here, joints have been burnished with flames and full-on snogged by smoke. Seeing the chefs lovingly nurturing that meat makes it feel like you’re being served an extravagant roast by your favourite grandmother – should that grandmother be a dexterous, agile young chef, of course.
Anyway, as you watch the rather comforting tableau unfold infront of you, pass the time with some Mexican inspired snacks that the restaurant is so famous for. The pig taco, which you can order sober or drunken (the latter involves a shot of tequila), is divine. Speaking of which, if you’re nursing a hangover that those licking flames only seem to exacerbate, then a round of Temper’s famous Bloody Marys will sort you out while you wait.
Anyway, on to those roasts. We write the plural form quite deliberately, and if you’re one to get ‘meat envy’ from another person’s roast choice, then this is the ideal place for you. Come with a friend and order the ‘Three Beast Roast’ for just £35 per person, where you get aged beef, roasted pork and smoked lamb shoulder to share. Yep, you don’t have to choose!
For the more selfish members of the squad (and the solo Soho diners, it should be said), you can, of course, have your own roast and choose from one of those three option, or a smoked baby chicken with chimichurri. Sides include beef fat roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings that could possibly be the biggest in London – and bigger is always better in the case of these batter-based beauties.
And to finish things off, it’s got to be a sticky toffee cookie with a fior di latte ice cream. We know what you’re thinking; don’t fuck with the classics. But once you’ve tried these gooey deep-dish cookies, baked in a Temper’s wood-fired ovens and steeped in toffee sauce, you might just be proclaiming that rules were meant to be broken…
P.S The best place to pull up a pew is under one of the skylights. We speak from illuminated experience.
Website: temperrestaurant.com
Address: Temper, 25 Broadwick Street, London W1F 0DF
Hawksmoor Air Street
Ideal for when you want the best roast beef in town…
This London institution is known for serving some of the best beef in the country. And beef is what you’ll get served for Sunday lunch here – Hawksmoor is a steak restaurant, after all. Choose from a slow roast rump or from their blackboard cuts for sharing. From the latter, go for the Chateaubriand with all the trimmings, because it’s still the weekend and you’re at work tomorrow.
You may or may not know that, back in the day when ovens weren’t invented, joints of meat were traditionally roasted on a spit over an open fire. Doing things in an old fashioned way doesn’t necessarily mean better, but when it comes to roasting meat, it probably does. So to achieve the same flavour, Hawksmoor starts the roasting process on real charcoal and then finishes their roasting joints in the oven. The result is a slightly smoky roast with a gorgeous crust. Heaven.
You’re not a beast, of course, and you know that it’s as much about the trimmings and the sides where Sunday Roasts are concerned. In a restaurant famed for their enduring attention to detail, Hawksmoor has given a lot of thought to this side of the menu. Here, the supporting cast includes roast potatoes (of the beef dripping variety, naturally) and a giant garlic bulb which has been roasted down to a mellow paste to satisfyingly squeeze on top of, well, whatever you want. Carrots, seasonal greens , and an unctuous bone marrow gravy seal the deal.
If the deal was still up in the air like a South American wonderkid on transfer deadline day waiting for their work permit, then perhaps the Yorkies here will convince you? The size of a baby’s head and as light as you like, they’re gravity-defying, life-affirming things.
Go big before going home (on a stretcher) with extras of celeriac mash and sausage gravy and raise the white serviette of surrender before agreeing with pals that you deserve an Uber home.
Website: thehawksmoor.com
Address: 5A Air St, London W1J 0AD
Read: Where to find the best steak in London
Kerridge’s Bar & Grill at Corinthia Hotel London
Ideal for a celebratory lunch of the refined but unpretentious variety…
Sunday lunch is Tom Kerridge’s favourite meal to cook and eat. So much so, in fact, that he’s even got a TV series on the subject. So it should come as no surprise that the Sunday roasts at his Bar and Grill are pretty darn spectacular.
He’s a chef known for his flavoursome yet unpretentious food, and that ethos is delivered with aplomb in the dining room of the Corinthia Hotel. This isn’t a roast you’d get at your mums – like his ‘elevated’ pub grub, it’s a beautifully refined affair.
Pork loin – perfectly just-pink – is served with a pig’s cheek fritter and smoked black pudding, all pulled together with a redcurrant gel. Roast chicken comes with a sage and apricot stuffing and white onion soubise whilst roast lamb is complemented by a malt vinegar ketchup (something we’d like them to bottle and sell), haggis and a shallot fondant. Yep, this isn’t an ‘all the trimmings’ kind of meal; the sides are paired thoughtfully and deliberately.
Whichever way you want to play it, get ready for the stuffed Yorkshire pudding – it’s a triumph of engineering and perhaps the meatiest, most umami-laden thing on the whole menu. Which, in the hands of Kerridge and co., is really saying something!
Website: kerridgesbarandgrill.co.uk
Address: Kerridge’s Bar and Grill, 10 Northumberland Avenue, London WC2N 5AE
Blacklock Soho
Ideal for cosy Sundays vibes below Soho street level…
Another Soho basement, another day that turns into night…
This particular basement, it should be said, is just about as ‘Soho’ as they come – the restaurant is housed in a former brothel and they’re not shy about shouting loud and proud about its insalubrious past. Indeed, there must be a ‘meat market’ joke in here somewhere, but we’re not about to make it…
Fortunately, in the dining room it’s more laid back, with decor that quietly whispers “we serve good meat” in a wood panel, low lighting and green leather booth seating kind-of-way. Of course, they do serve good meat here – some of the juiciest and most succulent in the capital, in fact.
Start with their rather unique take on a Bloody Mary (yep, we realise we already had one at Temper, but we’re not always hungover, honest), here dubbed a Beefy Mary and made even more restorative than normal with the addition of a nourishing beef jus and a whisper of smoke.
Even though you’re here for the roast, the cull yaw crumpets are a wonderful way to kick things off; delicious slow roasted, soft and yielding mutton that’s been gently spiced is served on a spongy crumpet (it’s the ultimate sauce-soaker) with a jug of gravy to help get things sensual. Pickled onion brings sweet relief from all that richness.
Sensual? We didn’t say that out loud, did we?
Pigs head on toast is equally as tempting. Rather than being faced with something macabre looking up at you from its bread-y bed, the meat has been slow-cooked, picked down and shredded, before being spun through with its fatty-as-fuck braising liquor. Topped with chilli and – like the crumpets – served with a boat of gluggable gravy to pour over, it’s an indulgent, soul-nourishing spectacle that your cardiologist may disapprove of, but your therapist would certainly encourage.
When it comes to the main event, whole joints are roasted over open coals. Similarly to Temper’s three beast feast, they offer an ‘all-in option’, which is a mix of roast beef, lamb and pork with all the trimmings, clocking in at just £25 a head. Since Sundays are made for sharing, this one really is a no-brainer. Your wallet will thank you, too.
For veggies, the celeriac roast is as enticing as the meats, with the whole damn root roasted over open coals until fudgy and caramelised in every crevice. Order a bubbling cauldron of cauliflower four cheese (Montgomery cheddar, ogleshield, stilton and parmesan, if you’re wondering) topped with panko breadcrumbs, and you’ve got yourself a beautiful, beige feast.
Try to save room for pudding – the last time we went, we had the apple and blackberry crumble for afters and it was, much like the roast itself, one of the most heart warming, soul restoring plates of food in the world.
Do be aware that Blacklock’s Sunday Roasts get booked up months in advance, so secure yourself a table and wait in eager anticipation of one of the best roast dinners in Soho.
Website: theblacklock.com
Address: Blacklock, 24 Great Windmill Street, Soho, London W1D 7LG
Dean Street Townhouse
Ideal for a Soho House take on a Sunday Roast…
For a refined take on a Sunday roast, it’s to the Dean Street Townhouse you must head.
Offering a two or three course menu and served from 12-5pm, the vibe inside is seemingly designed to make you feel all fancy; all starch white-table cloths, chequered black and white flooring and red leather banquette seats. Book a booth with friends and make a proper occasion of dining on Dean Street.
Here, it’s a perhaps more predictable roll call than some of the other entries on our list (this is a Soho House with a broad, basic spectrum to feed), but that’s sometimes what you want from your roast, right? Not sometimes; most of the time…
Hereford beef is, of course, served with a billowing Yorkshire pud. The roast pork comes with pigs in blankets and a velvety apple sauce, and, currently, the roast chicken arrives with the welcome addition of bread sauce, because, well, why should you only have bread sauce on Christmas day?
If you’re visiting from out of town and want to try some upmarket versions of British classics while you nurse a drink and consider the other cloying Soho House clientele, then the sausage roll and scotch egg here are both darn good. Be warned; service can be a little slow, so while you wait for your mains to appear, admire the beautiful room and discuss the contemporary works of art on the walls which come from the likes of Tracey Emin.
Like many restaurants, the Dean Street Townhouse, by law, has had to put a calorie count next to its roasts. At all costs, ignore these little numbers chastising you for your greed. It’s Sunday, and it’s time to stuff your face.
Website: sohohouse.com
Address: 69-71 Dean St, London W1D 3SE
The Devonshire
Do we even need to introduce the Devonshire? If you’ve ever scrolled through Instagram, read the Food section of basically any Saturday or Sunday supplement, or simply felt a little hungry in the heart of Soho, then you’ve probably heard of this all-conquering new boozer.
But for those who haven’t; the Devonshire is the work of hospitality dream trio Oisin Rogers, Charlie Carroll and Ashley Palmer Watts, all of whom bring their experience to this gastropub with big and bold ambitions to be the best in the business.
Sure, you might have to avoid a braying TopJaw clutching a totally superfluous microphone and pretending to like Guiness outside. And yes, you might have to sit so close to the central woodfired grill that you leave with no eyebrows. But we do have to rather begrudgingly admit that the Devonshire is good. Very good.
And on no day of the week is their confidence and technical prowess more keenly realised than on Sundays, at lunchtime, when all of the team’s honed hospitality and precise, generous meat cookery is shown off to its full potential. Sunday funday, indeed.
It’s from the Devonshire’s dedicated butchery room, which boasts space for 4000 steaks, that the magic happens. Nope, there’s no mixed grill here. Neither is there the tough decision of whether to go for chicken, lamb, pork or beef (beef, it’s always beef), with only the latter served in roast rib form with all the usual sides and aplomb. That rib comes in a single, thick slice, wall-to-wall blushing pink, with silver service for the roasties and Yorkshire puddings. Re-ups of the gravy boat are available on request. What more could you want?
For £27 a head, this is certainly at the premium end of the pricing for a Sunday roast in Soho (or pretty much anywhere in London, for that matter), but it’s well worth it. Finishing things off with the signature bread and butter pudding is a no brainer.
Website: devonshiresoho.co.uk
Address: 17 Denman St, London W1D 7HW
The Game Bird
Ideal for an elegant, old-fashioned Sunday roast…
Under the watchful eye of Michelin-starred chef Lisa Goodwin Allen, who created the menu here alongside executive chef Jozef Rogulski, The Game Bird serves a seriously succulent rib of beef for their Sunday lunch. It’s carved tableside on one of the most beautiful, old fashioned silver trolleys you’ll ever see, providing a slice of theatre that’s nearly as impressive as the star of the show; ***that***(!!!, am I right?) beef.
Here, it’s two courses for £50 or three for £60, with an enjoyably retro coronation chicken the pick of the starters. For mains, we can’t help thinking veggies are given a raw deal; the vegetarian option when we visited was an egg. Now, however crispy or free range that might be, it does feel a little short on substance compared to the pomp and ceremony of the theatrical carving of that blushing beef. Silence the critics with dessert; the tropical pavlova with coconut sorbet is a cracking conclusion to a leisurely lunch here.
Housed in the five-star Stafford Hotel, this restaurant is all about serving high quality British cuisine in refined, almost regal surrounds. Accordingly, it’s a place where you’ll want to wear your Sunday best.
Finish your lunch with a post-prandial martini at the American Bar, for no other reason other than it would be rude not to.
Website: thestaffordlondon.com
Address: The Stafford, 16-18, St James’s Pl, St. James’s, London SW1A 1NJ
Cora Pearl Covent Garden
Ideal for a swanky, celeb-studded Sunday…
Cora Pearl is the younger sibling to perennially popular Kitty Fishers, the Mayfair bistro known for its confident British cooking and celebrity clientele, equally.
Like Kitty Fisher’s, not only is Cora Pearl named after an infamous courtesan, but it also places a focus on unfussy British fare, and unfussy is definitely a prerequisite of a Sunday roast, we’d venture.
It’s all very gorgeous inside, and mellow jazz music plays in the background, making you want to linger a while after your meal. Or, of course, linger a little before the headlining course, with some smoked cod’s roe crumpets or devilled whitebait.
When it comes to the roast, it’s everything that you could want; generous, expertly cooked and darn delicious. They serve roast sirloin here which is crowned as the king of roasting joints for good reason – served perfectly medium rare, each slice is a showstopper.
The roast chicken is equally as tasty and comes perked up with dill mayo – a classic combination. You get a choice of fish at Cora Pearl, too. On our last visit they were serving up a roasted stone bass number that certainly looked the part.
Either way, finish with the signature strawberries and cream (so much more than that prosaic description, but we won’t ruin the surprise!), and leave deliciously satisfied.
Website: corapearl.co.uk
Address: Cora Pearl, 30 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8NA
The Bottom Line
The only problem when eating in Soho is that it’s dangerously close to some of the best cocktail bars in the city – better get the recipe for those beef jus Bloody Mary’s for tomorrow!