Roast Dinners in London

Times are ominous yet there is still time for a roast dinner, this week at Brook House in Fulham.

Roast dinner fans and friends – we have a situation. A new enemy of roast dinners has appeared:

No, not him.

No, not him either.

Though I’m kind of surprised that someone who was chancellor for 8 hours would spell like a pre-ChatGPT teenager.

And no, not him either.

I did say, “new” enemy. For it is Charlotte Ivers – the new number one enemy of all roast dinner fans around the world…

How dare she call me…and you, mugs for paying £20.00 for roast potatoes. £20.00 is bargain, anyway.

Jimmy Corkhill’s Roast Dinner Addiction and Recovery

No, never heard of her either before, she wasn’t a Brookside actress, but she was a media manager for Theresa May during her stint in Downing Street, so she’s clearly as qualified to talk about restaurants as I am.

Apparently she’s a restaurant critic for The Times.

Yes, she has been to Lilibet’s as have all the other restaurant critics in London. All of them. All. Of. Them. I quite fancy going.

So Brook House is in Fulham, and the vibe matches too – I appeared at my sober and washed best, but still felt more conspicuously punching above my class than normal. The place has a whacking great tree in the middle of it. I assume fake, but it looks real enough.

I didn’t take any photos of the venue as I massively had solo-dining am-I-a-lonely-sad-fucking-influencer vibes sat in the middle of a restaurant, next to another table dining (had I taken my earphones out then I would have been in conversation with them) in a busy restaurant.

Brook House is the kind of place I’d imagine from the photograph and one paragraph I’ve read, Charlotte Ivers might appreciate. Obviously not ordering from the Sunday roast menu as she isn’t a mug, unlike me.

It was priced at Fulham levels too – £30.00 for lamb shoulder, £28.00 for pork belly and £29.00 for beef rump. No vegetarian or vegan offerings.

Next weekend is my birthday roast, yay joy of Dry January birthday yay oh joy, so I’m saving my hopes of dreamy pork belly for there, therefore it was a toss between lamb jus or red wine jus – which jus did I diswant the least. What you looking at? Apparently diswant is a word. AI said so.

I went for the lamb shoulder.

Beth Jordache Put on Trial for Overcooking the Beef

Note, must buy some dishwasher tablets tomorrow morning.

STOP THE SMALL GRAVY BOATS. Yes I will do something with the domain name www.stopthesmallboats.co.uk at some point. 3 weeks into Dry January and I haven’t done anything on my Dry January to-do list.

So, carrots. Singular. It was soft and quite fruity – too fruity for a honey glaze, perhaps a maple glaze but I’m unconvinced that is the answer either. Was nice though.

Cabbage was a bit on the crunchy side, and a bit on the buttered side.

And there was quite a collection of green beans – lacking much in the way of flavour, and a bit undercooked for my personal preferences, and hence a bit squeaky, but your mileage may vary. You might even prefer jus to gravy.

Trevor Jordache Buried Under the Patio… With the Roast Potatoes

The roast potatoes, 5 of them and rather on the small side, tasted like deep fried chunky chips, deep fried in oil that needs changing too.

Yet I’m not convinced they were deep fried – they do look more oven roasted and I think the texture when eating them suggested that too, but they didn’t taste to expectations. The menu suggests that they are cooked in beef fat…not something I recognised. I wasn’t keen on them…maybe Charlotte Ivers has a point.

The Yorkshire pudding was huge, too much so and much of it wasted, but hey Instagram needs them huge. The top part tasted a bit burnt, generally it was quite floury to taste and not especially enjoyable – the bit that I could be bothered to eat.

This review isn’t going well, and then I need to talk about a cut of lamb served that rather darkened colour. Yep, they’ve overcooked the lamb too.

However, it was actually a really nice cut of lamb – so there was no skimping on the quality of meat. The fat was nicely rendered, some of the lamb was quite tender – but yeah, it had quite an overcooked vibe to it. Maybe I had the end slice, and hence I was just unlucky here.

Finally, the jus. I’ll give props for serving different jus’ for each roast dinner, though they only served a very small thimble of it. The jus itself…well, it was sticky and yacky. There was some lamb flavour going on, maybe some red wine vibes or similar, but it wasn’t what I personally look for on a roast dinner.

Brook House

You might be different from me. For your sake, I hope so. But even in terms of roast dinners, you might be different from me.

I’m looking for a northern-style roast dinner, the revered “your mum made this” roast dinner but with seasoning, herbs and no burnt meat, kind of roast dinner. And proper gravy So if your preference is for your roast dinner to have jus rather than gravy, then my scores are probably going to be a bit meaningless to you.

That said, Brook House got some things wrong that we’d agree with. Burnt top to a floury Yorkshire pudding, overcooked lamb and roast potatoes that tasted like they had been deep fried, even if I remain unconvinced that they were.

Did I like anything? Well, the lamb was of high quality, and the fat was rendered quite gloriously. Service was attentive and friendly…though also service charge was a stonking 15%. Consider my eyebrows raised. Oh…yeah, there was a £1.00 charge for extra gravy despite only providing a thimble in the first place.

Maybe Charlotte Ivers is right. Maybe I am a mug. And a mug that paid £30.00. But perhaps my January vibes are getting in the way a bit here too. Can we skip to the fun part of the year, please?

I’m struggling for a score here, because I worry my mood is affecting the score, but also maybe the roast affected my mood. Then again, the paying of £50.00 (including transport and a bag of consoling Haribo) for a roast dinner I wasn’t keen on, and doesn’t look as good as all the 5 star reviews on Google that Brook House seems to have…oh well, I’m a 6.27 out of 10. It wasn’t for me, or it wasn’t my day. It’s a busy place, I’m sure they’ll cope without my stagnant score.

Gosh, normally writing cheers me up. Fucking January. Fucking bastards ruling the world. I’ll be back for my birthday roast next week – it better be better than last year’s burnt pork belly.