To end a fairly exciting week, I was going to one of the places on my to-do list that I had the most hope for, Lore Of The Land in Fitzrovia. It’s one of the few on there that could be “better than Blacklock“.
But the big news this week wasn’t actually where I was going for a roast dinner, believe it or not. Yes, the really big news was that Papa Musk is finally bringing back FREE SPEECH to Twitter!
Celebrate good times. It’s been a strange few years without free speech. I’ve not had to read any tripe about 5G conspiracy theories, nor ever heard the slightest doubt over the vaccines. Not heard a word from anyone who believes in QAnon, never heard anyone blame NATO for Russia invading Ukraine, Donald Trump’s views have been utterly banished from the whole internet and not repeated by a single bot…sorry…I mean person.
And in the spirit of our newly-granted free speech, Jacob Rees-Mogg even admitted that implementing the Brexit deal would be an act of self-harm:
I could have told you that. Well…I have. Too many times.
Yes, this was the week where we could finally say anything we wanted to after years of not having free speech. TESLA IS OVERHYPED SHITE. Yeah I know, he’s the richest man in the world, single-handedly stopping all pollution from transport with those nice clean lithium batteries, and I’m just some jealous twat with a blog that doesn’t even put half of his life savings into Dogecoin. What kind of tosser must I be? We both have small nobs though. You know that.
Ahhhh, if only Tesla made tractors.
Lord Gravy Of The Land
So this was my 3rd attempt at reviewing the roast dinner at Lore Of The Land. We were booked in last summer, really looking forward to it, until shortly before we received a cancellation notification. No other communication at all and pretty damn short notice to find a replacement. Tossers.
A few days later, I read that they’d had a fire. Not tossers.
Then we were booked in for my birthday roast back in January. They called me in the morning to advise that they’d need to cancel due to a kitchen issue. I then read that they had had another fire. Thankfully a much more minor one.
But they offered me a free roast dinner as an apology. Which they didn’t really need to do – shit happens – they really didn’t need to give away free food because they’d had a fire. I accepted their generosity anyway – were it a struggling independent instead of a venue owned by some rich bloke that used to be married to Madonna, then accepting would have been a trickier decision for the conscience. Yeah I have one. I’ve stopped voting Tory, OK? For now.

The venue itself is gorgeous, it has a really vintage, antique kind of feel to it with rickety floorboards and those ancient staircases which if someone tried to build now, they’d be sent back to carpentry school.
I don’t remember if there were three or four floors, but each had its own dining area, and two of the floors had some huge husks of meat protruding at the serving area, along with some superb-looking pies.
Lord Gravy Of The Land Ploughed By A Dominator Combine Harvester

The menu at Lore Of The Land, lore of the land ploughed by a sexy combine harvester – yes I did look for tractor porn at the weekend. You did also, right?
There isn’t actually as much tractor porn on Pornhub as I expected. Watch my natural round tits bounce on the tractor, at just 41 seconds long was probably the highlight, or maybe Hot emo girl climbs neighbors tractor to masturbate. And a couple of women peeing on tractor wheels. Is that a thing?
I would link to it but I don’t want you to accidentally look at porn at work. And I don’t want to end up being RoastHub on the internet.

“Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well it just so happened that as I was reading a roast dinner review, I somehow ended up accidentally ended up looking at pornography…”. Yeah, I can see the political commentators now – “as if anyone reads a review of fucking roasts dinners”.
But they do. A few of you do anyway. Not many. I’m never going to be famous, am I? You still want to know how good Lore Of The Land is, right? Oh yeah, the menu. So the vegetarian option was asparagus – I normally wouldn’t mention the vegetarian option as it isn’t a consideration but just asparagus feels a bit weak, no? They also had fish as a roast dinner. I would actually try it.
However, there was no getting past the choice between beef or lamb for me. I was pretty much set for beef when my accomplice to my left was advised that she could have both. So I ordered both. It would have been priced £29.00, were some bloke that used to be married to some singer with the pointy boob top not paying for us. Like a virgin, watching tractor porn for the very first time. Like a vir ir ir ir gin…OK.
I Am The Lord Of The Gravy Land Said Me
I think our roasts arrived after around 30 minutes, though I wasn’t taking too much notice of the time. There is a photograph later of the roast with the gravy, but you still cannot see it the gravy then either. Aha.

Lets start with the carrots. This was definitely a little different to the normal roasted carrot – this being a combination of carrot sticks (I think steamed but not sure), with carrot puree poured over, and then some toasted seeds over the top.
Quite an effort – it looked beautiful and tasted good, though the puree being slightly colder temperature than the carrots did make it feel slightly odd.
The charred hispi cabbage was gorgeous, really quite a succulent depth to it, with some crunch added from the toasted almonds and a rich, buttery taste from the garlic butter. This was a wow moment.
The little green poo on the plate was actually ketchup. Yes, they put ketchup on the roast dinner. Walnut ketchup. By the way, if you have a nut allergy then you can easily not have nuts – and they also had replacements for the beef-dripping roast potatoes, for vegetarians.

Said roast potatoes came in a bowl and though it worked out to about 3 each, they did bring more out – so really we had about 5 each. They look burnt, don’t they? But though they were rather incinerated, they were freshly incinerated and didn’t actually taste burnt. I liked them. Crispy – deeply so, with fluffy insides, they weren’t that far away from perfect. Well, they probably were perfect before the chef forgot about them and left them in the oven too long.
I was also a big fan of the Yorkshire pudding. Some mixed thoughts around the table, but it was a double-yolk Yorkie, or so it seemed to your humble basicness writing this. Soft and fluffy on the bottom, crispy on the edges – and again also seemed miraculously freshly-made.

Savour The Flavour
I know not to order more than one meat, and again this was a mistake of mine. I would rather savour the flavour of one meat – otherwise it can kind of be confusing.
Both the lamb and the beef were very nice, but neither amazed. The beef was soft and tender, the lamb more course – but the lamb had more flavour to it. I marginally preferred the lamb, but having a half portion of each isn’t really enough for me to judge.
And finally, the gravy was…wank. As wank as this AI tweet service I signed up for at $49 a month which is supposed to generate me 1000’s of new followers, because like Nigel Farage, I am losing followers.
Though most of my unfollows are suspended accounts. Must be that new-found freedom of speech kicking in. Anyway, want to see what this super clever AI tweeting platform recommended that I tweet, to gain 1000’s of followers?

The holiday season is the perfect time to onboard your friends and family onto NFTs because they have too much money during a cost of living crisis?
Don’t worry, there was a 7 day trial and I cancelled within 7 minutes. I hope I have anyway. At least one of the suggested tweets was about Sunday roasts. AI? LOL AI.
Oh, so the gravy. It was like all the effort had gone onto the rest of the meal, and the gravy was an after-thought. A weak, watery after-thought.
Such a shame.
Lore Of The Land. Oh. Your Gravy. Oh.
If Lore Of The Land had had good gravy, then it would easily have been the best roast dinner of 2022. Not quite the best ever – but up there.
The cabbage was wow, the yorkie and roast potatoes were on the verge of excellent (despite the roasties being roasted for way too long). The meat was very nice but then the gravy…what happened? It was like they’d been inspired by Young’s proscribed watery gravy efforts. Why?
I don’t want to moan too much, as Lore Of The Land is still excellent. The venue is gorgeous, service was good – timely and polite. We had a £45 bottle of Malbec, which was superb – plus their own brewed beers were very pleasant too.
One of my vegetarian accomplices described her asparagus as the best she’d ever had – two of my other accomplices had the confit duck and mushroom pie, and offered me a little of their leftovers, and wow – that was insanely tasty. Though my other vegetarian accomplice, delightfully dressed as an extra from Neighbours in the early 90’s, did complain about the lack of protein. On a vegetarian roast. Aha.
The lowest score on the table was a 7.50, the highest a 9.00 – with a range in between. Most people commented on the disappointing gravy, someone even went so far as to call it “unforgiveable” – except the vegetarians who actually had some viscosity and flavour to theirs.
If you can forgive the gravy (I know I said I wasn’t going to go on about it any more) then Lore Of The Land do offer an excellent roast dinner. I’m scoring it an 8.19 out of 10, which still makes it the 3rd best roast dinner of 2022 so far.
I’ll be back next week – going to another place with a very good reputation. Just please do good gravy though. Or naked tractors.
Summary:
Lore Of The Land, Fitzrovia
Station: Great Portland Street
Tube Lines: Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan Line
Fare Zone: Zone 1
Price: £29.00
Rating: 8.19
Loved & Loathed
Loved: Sensational cabbage, decent roast potatoes, soft double-yolk yorkie, gorgeous old venue and lots of creativity from the chefs.
Loathed: Gravy was watery wank. Why?
Where now, sailor?
Random roast review: The Castle, Harrow
