Roast, Borough Market

Skip The Nonsense

So, welcome to the first roast dinner review of the Jeremy Hunt era, featuring Roast, in Borough Market.

I guess we have to start with a certain problem-causing blonde woman in her 40’s.

Mary, Mary, quite incompetent, how does the economy grow. But the ex-Prime Minister, Mary, isn’t the only young (ish) woman making controversial decisions that affect my life.

I have a friend. A roast dinner friend. A good roast dinner friend, who I met through this blog (well…Twitter), who has accompanied me on several roast dinners, who knows the game – who arranged for her 40th birthday to be celebrated with a roast dinner…in a pub that I have already reviewed.

But I couldn’t let you, the gravy-eating wokerati, go two weeks without a review so I needed a plan. I’d already reviewed Toby Carvery, though I guess I could have gone to another branch. I guess maybe somewhere in London, apart from Yorkshire Burrito, might do a roast dinner wrap? Or maybe I could review a supermarket pre-prepared roast dinner, like in lockdown? Urgh.

Then I realised – Roast, who embody the meaning of life, or at least my life, must do a roast dinner on days over than Sundays?

Mary, Mary, Quite Incompetent

And they do! So here I was on a Thursday evening after work, going for a Sunday roast. How controversial. How delightfully controversial. How delightfully expensively controversial.

I arrived to find the receptionist was still sat there waiting for a competent Prime Minister.

After a little while, a live human turned up and showed us to our seats.

Roast is quite a grand-looking restaurant, with a grand-looking price tag on the menu – though more on that in a minute. It was mostly restaurant – though there was a pretty bar for drinks, as you walk in. A large volume of window would let shedloads of light in, at least during a Sunday lunch, and the restaurant looks out onto the tourist foodie joy of Borough Market.

Photo stolen from their Twitter:

Of course, being ugly and from a poor area of the country, they managed to hide me behind a screen, so the rest of the restaurant didn’t have to look at me. It also meant that we were hidden from view of the waiter and waitresses, one of whom came across as enjoying themselves a lot. I’m not sure if I mean that as a compliment. I think I don’t.

There were actually two options for a roast dinner on the menu:

Beef wellington was priced at a rather whopping £39.00. Yah. Darling. Given the cost of living crisis, I decided to save myself £2.50 and order the roast beef at £36.50.

Yeah, I know, I haven’t actually saved myself any money as I went out for two roast dinners rather than one, and one of them was the second most-expensive roast dinner I’ve ever had. Plus beers, wine, tube fares and a packet of crunch creams – because I didn’t want to pay for dessert and…oooh…that’s another money saving tip for you. Gosh, maybe I could become chancellor.

How Does The Economy Grow

£36.50. Needs to deliver, huh?

Deliver, deliver, deliver. Like Hermes.

Maybe I should show you the vegetables?

Right. Carrots. Quite a few of them supplied (though not if you ordered the beef wellington roast), they definitely tasted of carrot though were quite al dente – a little too much for my personal preferences, but it is legitimate to prefer them this crunchy.

The buttered greens were nice – less of a crunch than the carrots, quite buttery in texture though less notable on taste. Pretty good.

Next…hang on…do you realise that Liz Truss was actually our Prime Minister?

Speaking of things that I cannot believe happened, Roast actually supplied 4 roast potatoes instead of the London legal maximum of 3. I guess that accounts for why this roast dinner was almost twice the average price.

They had a mixed success rate – they were soft inside, though a little dry, and easily soaked up the gravy. They also had a bit of “cooked earlier” about them – but not too much, and they were kind of crispy on the outside in places. You could tell that they actually knew what they were doing – even if they hadn’t got close to perfection. Good enough, in the grand scheme of things. But not really earning that £36.50 price tag.

With trickle-down and fucked up budgets

The Yorkshire pudding was very good. Freshly cooked – it had this soft, sexy, succulence about it inside – the outside was quite crispy, but not too much. This is what they should be like.

The beef was also nice, cooked medium-rare, the actual quality of the cut seemed pretty damn good, there was a tenderness to it – yet also some nicely rendered fat too.

My accomplice described her beef wellington as “melt in your mouth”. I was allowed a bite – and she was right. I didn’t regret my choice, but the wellington was superb.

The gravy was really the only let-down of the meal – watery, tasteless and a little oily.

At least it was until extra gravy arrived – it took a while for us to be noticed, hidden behind the pleb screen, but eventually we managed to catch someone’s eye for extra gravy.

At which point the gravy was rich and beefy. Still on the watery side, albeit not so much. My accomplice advised it was the same gravy for her. Was this a taste bud malfunction, or was the tastier gravy with the beef wellington? Hmmm.

And pretty clueless fools all in a row

I can confirm that Roast do a pretty good roast dinner, which is a relief, given their name.

But is it worth £36.50? Absolutely fucking not. At least not in 2022’s prices. Come back in a year and that might be the price of a pint, let alone a roast dinner.

However, given the large amount of American accents that we could hear in Roast, I do whole-heartedly welcome Roast charging almost twice the average for a roast dinner, so we can soak up some more foreign exchange.

Most of the roast at Roast was good – the carrots were too al dente for my preferences, the original gravy for the beef was weak and watery – but otherwise inoffensive.

The Yorkshire pudding and the roast beef were particularly good – the yorkie itself was notably succulent inside. Yet I still keep thinking…£36.50. Granted, I am probably not the target market. Plus the service was nothing special either – nobody checked if we enjoyed our meals, nobody asked if we wanted more wine, and it wasn’t easy to get extra gravy.

My accomplice’s score was a 7.50. My score is a 7.35 out of 10.

If you have more money than sense (but obviously still cannot afford a flat in London) and are stupid enough to have a roast dinner midweek because you are already going somewhere that you’ve previously been to on the Sunday, then maybe give it a try. Otherwise, leave it for the tourists. It’s good – but not £36.50 good.

I’ll be back next week…and it will be Halloween.

Scared?