Roast Dinners in London

For the final review of 2025, I decided to do a re-visit, this time of Bar & Block in King’s Cross, which got a whopping 8.34 out of 10 back in 2017.

So for those that read the blog on the same week that I publish it, I hope you had a pleasant Christmas, and that, unlike myself you didn’t have any such Christmas panic as being told that we didn’t need stuffing on the Christmas dinner.

And for those reading any other week of the year, then I hope there was something to celebrate like Putin’s death or Trump being arrested.

Until this year, I’d never re-reviewed anywhere, but there were quite a few places near the top of my league table which I was nervous about.

Rightly so, in the case of The George on the Strand, which served me burnt pork belly when I re-reviewed it:

Previously the 5th best roast dinner in London, now the 309th best roast dinner in London.

The Old Red Cow in Farringdon fared even worse, with a drop from 16th best roast dinner in London, to 343rd best – or 14th worst, thanks to a plate of bland:

The other re-visit was to The Duke of Wellington in Notting Hill, which held up pretty well.

Hole-filled sock

So why did I not have confidence that this was still an 8.34 out of 10:

It had come with a fluffy yorkie, tender sirloin, decent cauliflower cheese – plus they had excellent air conditioning on a really hot day.

I definitely over-scored it, I also had a friend with me at the time who would have been disappointed had I scored it middling – I think nowadays this might have scraped a 7.00, and one should be able to look back at an early body of work and realise that it can be improved. Even some of the most hardcore Brexiters think Brexit could be improved – mostly by blowing up the Channel Tunnel, but hey, at least they admit Brexit might not be all of the sunlit uplands, unless they owned a hedge fund that made billions on the UK’s economy going to turd.

This year isn’t ending on a high – you’ve already seen the image of Bar & Block’s 2025 version of a roast dinner, you don’t need me to tell you this is a shit roast dinner – but I will be telling you.

As a whole, 2025 has been pretty decent for roast dinners. An average score of 7.19 (before today anyway) – which puts it pretty much in the middle of years. 7 roast dinners were crap, which is a score of 6 or under – 10 roast dinners got a score of 8 or above, which is more than normal.

The average price paid was £25.68 though skewed somewhat by paying £78.00 at The Connaught, which gives a roast dinner inflation rate of slightly under 3%.

The highest score I gave out was an 8.72 to The Larkshall in Chingford, and the lowest score…you might be about to find out.

A Broken Alarm Clock

It was quiet inside, with just one other table occupied – which shows I have pretty much zero impact on the roast dinner scene in London so why the fuck do I do this blog every week? I am reversing Brexit though…right?

Bar & Block was starting to have an unloved feel about it too, some of the fake leather covers on the sofas were peeling off, some chairs visibly scuffed, the table wonky – though still passable, and still rather vanilla inside.

For the last roast dinner before detox, I ordered an Alpacalypse – hardly the most exquistive IPA in the world, but it tasted rank at Bar & Block – it tasted full of chemicals like Carling, though the colour wasn’t Carling. Pretty sure it wasn’t an Alpacalypse either.

The menu has a million choices, but only 3 for those looking for a roast dinner. In fact only two, as one is a Chateaubriand sharer and I was mercifully solo dining – the other options being sirloin at £18.50 or chicken breast at £17.50.

I ordered the chicken – once someone finally came over around 15-20 minutes after I’d sat down, despite them only having one other table occupied.

And somewhat later, this rail replacement bus of a roast dinner turned up:

A Cassette Of Classic Rock

Let’s start with the carrots then, if we really fucking have to. These had been roasted, were soft yet had absolutely zero flavour.

Parsnips, of which there were two, managed to be soggy yet undercooked in the middle.

The cabbage was as miserable as it looks, boiled/steamed to death – wet and again lacking in any form of seasoning.

The misery continues, yet they also managed something new to me by providing me with a knife that was wet. Fine, I dried the knife, but then my right hand would become damp. So I’d dry the knife, again, and then a minute or so later my right hand would become damp again.

What new level of crud is this?

Speaking of crud…the roast potatoes were that – surely they were from a freezer bag, maybe they were actually roasted but I wouldn’t bet on it. One had a rather plastic feel to it, the others more soft and spongey, as if they’d been boiled after being put in the oven for the time than McCain advised.

A Polyester Frock

I actually quite liked the Yorkshire pudding. Only quite, for it was on the cold side and you could tell it had been cooked quite a while ago – but it was on the fluffy side and had a decent texture.

The two pigs in blankets were even quite excellent – proper herby sausages wrapped in bacon. It’s difficult, though possible, to fuck up the joy of pigs in blankets – so at least the lethergic-looking chef plodding around the open kitchen at Bar & Block managed to get that right.

And then the chicken…was this even chicken?

Back in 1998, I might have enjoyed this rendition of chicken, though also I might have voted to leave the EU back then, and I really did believe that Toby Carvery was the absolute peak dining option in the world.

Let’s zoom in as I want to share this misery with you:

If you told me that I’d been served some Linda McCartney chicken substitute trash, I would believe you. Texturally it didn’t feel like chicken. It tasted of a dirty grill plate. It looks, well, it looks like it is from 1998. It really was as miserable to eat as it looks.

Finally, the gravy was actually gravy by appearance, though it tasted of nothingness – cornflour perhaps.

Bar & Block

Would you like to see a cow sniffing the arse of another cow?

Yeah, that’s kind of how I feel about this roast dinner at Bar & Block. On the bright side there is one less over-rated venue on my League Of Roasts.

And the pigs in blankets were actually excellent.

Otherwise it was the wettest roast dinner of the year, possibly the most flavourless roast dinner of the year, with the worst chicken of the year – and yeah, that makes it the worst roast dinner of 2025 too. Signing off the year in style.

My updated score for Bar & Block is a lowly 3.90 out of 10. It really was that bad.

The first roast dinner of 2026 is booked, and it will be at a newly re-opened pub which looks rather classically gorgeous. I hope they do a good apple juice.