The Prince's Head, Richmond - Roast Dinners In London

Please note that due to Copyright Trolls, all images have been removed until I can manually review them, one by one, and ensure credit is appropriately displayed. So if the story suddenly makes no sense, then...well...soz.

This is a long process, so please bear with me...it will likely take until the end of 2024 until all images are reviewed and displayed correctly. Sigh.

Please note that this review is from March 14, 2017 and may be out of date...restaurants sometimes get better, get worse, employ a new chef or end up with new management.

I’m back. After an enforced month off because my local council won’t pay enough housing benefit to cover my rent unless I was living in a more expensive 1 bedroom flat/because I am selfish enough to insist on doing a job that I have trained for and for which there is lots of demand instead of working in MacDonalds – delete as appropriate.

And before you think I’m being all snobbish, I used to work in MacDonalds AND – this is very important, I have all 5 stars. I still have the badge somewhere. I would share a picture but it has my name on and you know, anonymity and all that. Not that anyone other than a handful of friends/people I met in a nightclub off my tits years ago, is reading. Though if you are, share it!

So this week’s edition is proudly sponsored by the beautiful Spanish “country” of Galicia. Yeah nobody else has actually heard of it either – think of it as a cross between Scotland and proper Spain, minus the shit bits like Magaluf, Costa Del Sol, Malaga, Marbella, Gibraltar…

Galicia has hills and lots of rain – well, more than London anyway. And very nice people, most of whom own some kind of farm animals and have less armpit hair than the average Spaniard. Oh yeah and bagpipes. Yes – they actually have bagpipes in Galicia.

If you or your organisation would like to sponsor Roast Dinners in London, please do drop me a line. I have some very competitive deals available.

Anyway, Sunday just gone, I donned my Kappa tracksuit and headed south of the river, replete with body armour and knife (and fork), into the gangster badlands of Richmond.

The Prince’s Head is the name and a popular little bugger it is too. I originally tried to book two weeks ago but it was fully booked. Which is normally a good sign.

Just 5 or so minute’s walk from Richmond station, within gorgeous surroundings, some wonderful housing and what appears to be a cricket pitch in the grass outside.

There’s actually a shopping centre in Hull, called Princes Quay. No apostrophe. And no second s, despite most of the locals called it Princess Quay. City of Culture 2017.

Myself and the most wonderful princes from the whole of beautiful, inspirational, historic, world-leading Galicia (don’t forget to book your holiday) had a table reserved around the back, hidden and slightly dark – atmospheric you may call it.

The options on the menu were the standard 4 – beef, lamb, chicken and pork. Plus I’m pretty sure they had a vegetarian option (nut roast) but I suffer from dubious eyesight when I see the word ‘vegetarian’. Prices varied from £14.00 to £18.00, depending on your selection.

I chose the chicken, replete with apricot and chestnut stuffing, which came to £15.00.

Have you booked your holiday to Galicia yet?

It took around 15 minutes to arrive. My initial judgement was positive – there seemed to be quite a healthy portion of chicken.

There was a mercifully small portion of red cabbage – enough to appreciate without getting tired. A little on the gloopy side, but I mean that in a good way.

Also a small gathering of Spring Greens. Unremarkable but pleasantly so.

There are only so many ways that you can describe carrots – these came as a handful, well a small child’s handful…hmm maybe a toddler’s handful.

A small portion of cauliflower cheese was also provided. Like the rest of their vegetables, it was pleasant but unremarkable.

What now? The roast potatoes. Sadly only 3 of them and all rather small. But what they lacked in quantity they made up for in quality, perfectly crispy on the outside, a hint of thyme and soft in the middle. You could call them perfect, though I won’t because they can always be better.

The Yorkshire pudding was good. Homemade and medium-sized, perhaps a tad too crispy around the edges.

Speaking of Yorkshire, you are going to Hull this year for the City of Culture celebrations, aren’t you? After you have been to visit Galicia, thanks once again to my wonderful sponsor.

Stuff me? Stuff you. Stuffing. It was an unusual flavour, apricot and chestnut. I personally didn’t diggity dig it, as it just didn’t work for me with the chicken. More of a personal taste thing – I admire the attempt at something off-centre and I’m sure other visitors of which there will be many once they have been to both Galicia and Hull, will appreciate it even more than the Dead Bod graffiti.

Near the end now, don’t worry, not too much culinary speak before I ramble on about nothing to close it.

The chicken was the second best part. You’d kind of expect that but not always with chicken as it can be rather plain. This was plump – proper chicken like my friend would grow in her bedroom in Galicia, not these shabby Portuguese crack-addict types in Nando’s.

Supremely tasty.

And the best part? Well, the part that makes the whole dinner. The gravy. So tasty, with a decent consistency that even your royal highness, Lord Gravy, here appreciated. None of this Berkshire jus crap. Just proper tasty, meat-stock gravy.

This was a very good roast dinner. Room for improvement, nothing really hit the wow-factor but I doubt I will review too many better this year. I’m scoring it an 8.00 out of 10.

Service was adequately perfunctory. Nothing for me to cheer, but nothing for me to moan about and boy do I enjoy a moan. Maybe I’ve spent too long dealing with recruitment consultants recently and I’m all moaned out about their general utter incompetence and lies. Some are good. OK. I get that. But the amount of times that they ring me up, blatantly fishing for information about companies hiring and they don’t actually have a job for me is ridiculous. I actually ended up in a fairly heated argument with one the other day when I refused to tell him who I had interviewed with. Prick.

Well, you’ve waited so long for a review that I already have another for you. And it is going to be a linguistic treat. Which, those of you that know me will understand how good that means the roast dinner was.

Shall we finish off with a game? It’s called Scotland/Galicia/Hull. Basically you have to guess which photographs are from which places. Answers on a roast potato. Oh and apologies for the shit photograph quality – blame WordPress as they automatically reduce the quality of uploaded photographs (I’ll get around to over-riding their code at some point).