Old Fountain, Shoreditch

NSFW: Warning - this review may not be safe for work due to lingerie models

It was the big pre-Christmas roast dinner, and we were just about booked at Old Fountain in Shoreditch. Merry Christmas!

Man in bra and knickers - red, because Christmas theme
Genusfotografen (genusfotografen.se) & Wikimedia Sverige (wikimedia.se), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Damn I now need to look at his crotch as I type for at least a paragraph or two.

Damn I now need to look at his crotch as I type for at least a paragraph or two.

Damn I now need to look at his crotch as I type for at least a paragraph or two.

That should do it.

Welcome to the Christmas not very special! Well, maybe the roast dinner will be special but sure as hell the writing won’t be.

We were pretty much booked into Old Fountain in Shoreditch – I say pretty much as they make it hard work to book there. An omen? I tried to book there for…last Christmas…I gave you my booking, but you can only book for up to 6 people on the online system. They studiously ignore e-mails, and chaser e-mails, and definitely don’t respond the very next day. I gave it away.

This year, I gave them a call, and we booked a table for 12.

Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker

It’s Christmas!

Really hot girl with large boobies and a Santa hat
Free download from https://www.pexels.com/@igor-starkov-233202/

Yes, I only showed the photograph of the man in lingerie so I had an excuse to show some hot women in Santa hats, without being accused of being non-inclusive. I’m all about the Diversity & Inclusion training. I even did some of the 8 Diversity & Inclusion training courses at work last year. And I’m very bribery aware. Not to mention fire safe. And single. And I have a small willy. Hi Jack’s mum, great to hear that you enjoy the blog.

So here we were at the Old Fountain in Shoreditch on the last Sunday before Christmas – well, not quite as the last Sunday is Christmas Eve, but many people, including myself, will be elsewhere (assuming a lack of typical British transport chaos) doing Christmas stuff.

My mother called me a week or so ago, seemingly petrified to ask if I really needed a roast dinner the day before Christmas Dad (lol…spelling). “Oh gosh no,” I responded, to her surprise. If I was in London however, or I ran Roast Dinners Around The UK, which I absolutely fucking wouldn’t with the state of our train network – getting around London on a Sunday is stress enough, then it would still be obligatory.

It’s actually a bit of a pain this year – New Year’s Eve is also a Sunday, and finding somewhere doing a Sunday roast for multiple people, including vegans, wasn’t easy.

Welcome to the roast dinner party, pal!

So here we were at the Old Fountain in Shoreditch on the last Sunday before Christmas. It’s a proper old boozer type of pub – slightly grim toilets, dark brown tables which have seen many a decade of action, old stained-glass windows which look kind of traditional. I feel like there might be a story or two from this pub, though if you click the story page of their website, you see “DURRANT FAMILY SINCE 1964”. Which I guess is about the sum of all the history I learned at school.

Most notably though was the excellent beer selection – plenty on cask, a selection of weird stuff like chocolate orange stout, some fairly ordinary craft pale ale/lager and a few tinnies in the fridge from the likes of Time & Tide.

The Old Fountain was also welcoming – the guy looking after us, and the young lady behind the bar were both very relatable.

The Old Fountain, Shoreditch, Chicken Sunday Roast menu
© Copyright – Roast Dinners In London 2023

Options on the menu including sirloin of beef at £22.50, pork loin with sticky BBQ ribs at £19.50, half a roast chicken at £19.50, a mega roast at £24.50, along with vegetarian and vegan wellington options.

I had no idea what to order, so I went for the chicken on the advise of the guy looking after us. Another lingerie model?

Doll with Santa hat and gun, wearing lingerie
Under CC license – CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED – https://www.flickr.com/photos/edwicks_toybox/

I’m even here for those of you with agalmatophilia. Everyone is welcome. Gosh, there’s probably some proper wrong’uns reading this isn’t there? ELON MUSK IS A WANKER. That should get rid of them.

Come out to the roast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs.

The Old Fountain, Shoreditch, Chicken Roast Dinner
© Copyright – Roast Dinners In London 2023

Yeah you cannot see half of it, but once I moved it all around it looked like something I would serve, and first impressions count, which is why I always talk about Brexit on a first date.

Starting with the carrot – some people received two, but myself only one. This had a little crunch and was pretty decent – I think a honey glaze but cannot say I was especially sure on that.

Then there was some parsnip and butternut squash mash – no you cannot see it on the above photograph, but there wasn’t much of it anyway. It was mushy but also punchy.

The Old Fountain, Shoreditch, Chicken Sunday Roast
© Copyright – Roast Dinners In London 2023

Well I might as well show the other main photograph rather than saying “well here’s a description of something else you cannot see”. It gives me space to use some more vaguely Christmas-related lingerie models, assuming I can find some with a re-use license as I’m trying to be a little safer with all the copyright trolls sending litigious letters to website owners.

Let’s hope none of them are being serious, otherwise there’s one of those annoying crowdfunding campaigns coming out, as fuck off am I paying £700 to use a photograph on a free-to-use, community-spirited blog, that I actually spend probably £2,500+ on a year on, not to mention much of my time, hopes and dreams, in my attempt to stop this country sliding into dictatorship, and a land of Young’s watery gravy. Merry Fucking Christmas to you too.

Cabbage. Again, not a huge amount of it – it was a little undercooked I thought, but it wasn’t especially noticeable.

One of my accomplices mentioned that her cauliflower was too hard and cheese-less, which I was really surprised about, for my cauliflower cheese was mushy yet had some evidence of cheese. Neither of our samples were a joy to behold, neither of our samples will ever be compared to Baby Jesus. OK, I am going to compare it to Baby Jesus.

AI generated man comparing cauliflower cheese to baby Jesus (well, half a baby)
Created by AI, obviously. Have a problem, then sue Stability.ai

Religious types don’t hate me please. Obviously religious types don’t do hatred as we can currently see much evidence of in the Middle East.

Sorry, Hans, wrong guess. Would you like to go for Shit Roast Potatoes where the scores can really change?

Roast potatoes. Do you remember last week when I said something along the lines of, “I think my blog might have cured London’s roast potato problem”?

The most disgusting roast potato ever.  The Old Fountain, Shoreditch
© Copyright – Roast Dinners In London 2023

What.

The.

Fuck.

Is.

This?

Oh hello.

Hot girls in Santa hats, wrapped in Christmas lights, laid next to each other
Under CC license – CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED – https://www.flickr.com/photos/rarstudios/with/51775455280

I’ll tell you what these were – some of the worst roast potatoes that I’ve ever had. Just look how grey this is/was – yeah you’ll have to scroll back up because Christmas. It didn’t taste cooked, yet was soft. It most certainly didn’t taste edible. The only saving grace is that they only gave us two each. Some people on the table had equally bad roasties – others didn’t, but nobody had theirs wrapped in Christmas lights or any form of exclaimable joy.

On the bright side, I guess my mission isn’t over so I’ll be back next year. Unless I get taken to court.

Oh man, shall we just end here and watch the 2023 Microsoft Excel World Championships?

Wow – the UK contestant has actually tasted over 5,000 beers. Though the next contestant called himself The Beerhunter. And then another contender had created her own beer. Yes I did watch some of it. Are there any hot women as contenders? No. Are there any in the audience? Yes. Yes, there is actually an audience for the Microsoft Excel World Championships. I mean, not like there is anything else to do in Las Vegas.

Come on, baby, come to papa, I’ll kiss your fucking Yorkshire pudding

The Yorkshire pudding was quite crispy and dry. I’ve had worse, it was edible, though I was mostly still shocking about how bad the roast potatoes were.

Fancy a Christmas cracker joke? Why did the chicken not taste of anything? To get to the…oh…this isn’t a joke. The chicken didn’t really taste of anything. The leg part was fairly juicy, but the breast was dry. Dry and tasteless. How? Why?

The little ball of stuffing…yeah you’ll have to scroll up if you want to see it, was burnt. There was some pork sausagemeat flavour to it. But that wasn’t sufficient to overcome the burnt taste.

Finally, the gravy, which was actually pretty good.

You know my saying that good gravy can rescue a poor roast? Well, maybe. It wasn’t like the gravy was especially overburdened with flavour or consistency, but there was just enough of each factor to please.

Hot girls in Santa hats, wrapped in Christmas lights, one touching the other
Under CC license – CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED – https://www.flickr.com/photos/rarstudios/with/51775455280

Yeah not quite that pleasing though.

Merry Christmas from the roast dinner at the Old Fountain

Well. It was a fun day out.

I’ll need to look back through all my reviews at some point over Christmas as I write the Roast Dinner Awards. But I suspect that the Old Fountain will be in the running for the award for the worst roast potato. The yorkie was too crispy, the stuffing burnt, the chicken dry.

My disappointment tempered somewhat by decent gravy, and the veg, though sometimes mushy, was reasonably on the level.

Let’s start the scoring with a positive – the vegan reasonably enjoyed her roast, and scored it a 7.00 out of 10. The two vegetarians were contentedly dissatisfied with scores of 6.00 and 6.20 out of 10.

Otherwise we had two scores of 4.00, a 5.60, two 6.00’s, a 6.20, a 6.30 and a 7.00 – the latter seemed to cause a minor marital dispute with one of the 4.00’s. I was told to mention that the beef was really fatty (this wasn’t a compliment) but then someone else said that the beef was quite nice.

My score is a 5.55 out of 10. Which is a combination of disappointment over the roast potatoes, stuffing, yorkie and chicken – but also the sadness when you arrange a group meal, and you get this. Especially when I suspected that the Old Fountain might do a good roast. Gutted.

Also there’s a dollop of sadness, because the staff really were welcoming, the Old Fountain is a proper pub and they have a really good beer selection. Don’t let my review put you off going there for a beer or three – in fact, do go there for a beer or three. There’s so many soulless wanky places in Shoreditch serving Becks or whatever piss nonsense is trendy nowadays – Madri, I think? Meh-dri. So it is quite infuriating that I’m not writing a glowing review of their roast dinner, that I’m not scoring it in the 8’s, that I’m not able to say “hey great pub with a great roast dinner”.

Meh. Merry Christmas, folks. I’ll be back for a New Year’s Eve roast dinner…though I don’t especially have high hopes for that one.

Christmas tree fallen over
© Copyright – Roast Dinners In London 2023

OMG just thought that someone should launch a lingerie range featuring Microsoft Excel. No it doesn’t exist. And, yes, I did try asking AI to create it but it refused.

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Summary:

Old Fountain, Shoreditch

Station: Old Street

Tube Lines: National Rail, Northern

Fare Zone: Zone 1

Price: £19.50

Rating: 5.55

Get Booking

https://oldfountain.co.uk

Instagrim

Loved & Loathed

Loved: It's an independent pub with a great beer selection - for oldies and modern craft drinkers. Gravy was decent.

Loathed: Worst roast potatoes in a long time - grey and uncooked. Yorkie too crispy, stuffing burnt, chicken dry. Meh.

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