The Camberwell Arms, Camberwell

Skip The Nonsense

It was time to liberate The Camberwell Arms from the persecution, pillage, sedition and rape of being on my to-do list.

But first.

Actually The Camberwell Arms was on my to-do list right from the beginning – it was omnipresent on those listicles that the likes of Time Out officially specialise in.

But then it went off my to-do list. And then back on. Then off again – I would compare it to the hokey-cokey, but perhaps it’s more comparable to Trump tariffs, which may well be off by time you read this – or by time I even finish writing this. Or may have doubled.

Like…serious point quickly. Why on earth did Americans (maybe also the Kremlin) think it was a good idea to put someone who had bankrupted casinos in charge of the world’s largest economy, an economy which (albeit funded by government debt) was growing remarkably strongly when the casino bankrupter came to power.

And now:

Casinos are literally designed to take our money – it’s a can’t lose business.

Yet someone managed to bankrupt his own chain of casinos, and now he’s running the world’s largest economy…into the ground.

Well, at least he won another golf tournament this weekend. Con…grats.

Cambered Roadblock

Sigh. Anyway, The Camberwell Arms had made it back onto my to-do list, and I’ve been trying to book a table for a while – and always there are no tables free for all the Sundays ahead.

But last week I tried on the off-chance, and there was a table at 1pm. Boom. Booked. Put a dress on my imaginary poodle, combed my imaginary moustache, paid my imaginary tariffs – Camberwell, I was ready.

It wasn’t actually open when I arrived, so I had a little plod up and down the high street – despite The Camberwell Arms being gastropub par magnificence, the area hadn’t quite been turned into an extension of East Dulwich.

The Camberwell Arms itself is a gorgeous, open and welcoming gastropub – not even pretending to be a pub, and quite frankly is a restaurant in an old pub.

Inside is the usual mixture of exposed brick walls, old timber floors, teal paintwork – and it just feels really spacious, and seems to make the most of the light. It’s a rather gorgeous gastropub. Beware – I do use the word “gorgeous” quite a lot here.

The reason it went off my to-do list was because I could never figure out if they were offering a roast dinner or not. But they do come with roast potatoes, which was enough to persuade me.

Backwards camber

All the roasts are sharing platters – chicken at £48.00, beef onion and bone marrow pie at £50.00 (though that might be stretching the roast definition too much), Middlewhite pork at £54.00, two types of hogget at £58.00 or onglet at £58.00.

We settled for the Middlewhite pork – my accomplice may have preferred the onglet but I didn’t, I might have preferred the hogget but my accomplice wasn’t keen. And I’m always happy to see some crackling.

I also decided that The Camberwell Arms was in deficit to me – here I was ordering food, and they weren’t ordering a flipping thing from me.

So I decided to apply a tariff in the name of a pint of Lost & Grounded pale ale…which I’m not so fussed about as it is quite malty…I really should have ordered a glass of wine instead. Pretty sure I wrote the same sentence last week, though maybe without the tariff nonsense. Maybe.

The roasts arrived pretty quickly, maybe 15 minutes or so from ordering – it was one of those serve yourself platters so if the plating looks messy, it ain’t their fault.

Well, not their fault in the same way that inflation going up in USA won’t be Trump’s fault, it will be the fault of the companies putting their prices up (because of the tariffs).

Yep just 4 things to speak about this week – last week at Origin I had 4 meats to write about, let alone the rest of the roast.

So…starting with the carrot which was pretty damn whole. It was about as tough as you can get on the scale before you describe it as crunchy, there was enough give and it tasted, well, carroty.

I did get bored of it and wished for another vegetable – I think there was an upselling opportunity for The Camberwell Arms there, though perhaps best not to increase the deficit further, otherwise I might have to add a red wine tariff or something to my bill.

Adverse Camber

And that’s it for the vegetables. Hey, at least you can get to the end of this nonsense quicker. And so can I.

The roast potatoes were close to excellent. Fuck it, they were excellent – freshly cooked, really soft and fluffy in the middle, mostly crispy outsides – after eating these I was happy with my decision to class The Camberwell Arms as offering a roast dinner.

Some mixed feelings on the pork, for my preferences it was a little over-cooked – the meat itself felt quite dense, my jaw had more work to do than normal.

One part of the fat was quite tough too, but on the positive side the crackling was absolutely gorgeous, proper melt in your mouth stuff, and it was a really nice quality piece of pork.

Finally, the jus ish stuff was very watery, kind of oily yet tasted of a rich jus. For what it was I quite liked it, but proper gravy is my vibe. I was never going to get proper gravy at The Camberwell Arms.

Because I didn’t have enough to write about, and definitely for this reason only, the dessert menu appeared. I didn’t photograph it, but the was some chocolate fondant dessert on there, along with a lemon cake and a Basque cheesecake…maybe something else too.

They burnt the top of the cheesecake – can you believe it?! It was luxuriously creamy, yet really light – and it didn’t make me feel stuffed at all, in the same kind of way that the chocolate fondant might have (which was also gorgeous, I should add). The rhubarb didn’t have too much tartness, though could have done with slicing a little more, given that I only had a spoon – the poaching (assumedly) hadn’t broken it down much.

£10.00 for the cheesecake, but this is another example of the golden age of adding tariffs. Damn this was good. Oh, and yeah I know it being burnt is a thing, I’m only that Neanderthal when it comes to boobs.

The Camberwell Arms

It’s a tricky one to judge this – my score isn’t really going to reflect how much I appreciated The Camberwell Arms, because it is one of those places where I’d rather go on a Friday night than a Sunday, but hey, my blog is what it is.

So The Camberwell Arms really is an excellent establishment, from my 90 minutes in there. The service was really on the ball, efficient but also really friendly – there was a connection there which often there isn’t in your bog standard pub.

The venue itself is gorgeous, so airy and light, you could just sit here and marvel at it for a while. I didn’t have any wine, nor know enough about it – the beer choice was ordinary, in a London way (thankfully not in a Scunthorpe way).

Yet the roast dinner was a mixed bag, and not much of a bag. The roast potatoes were excellent, as was the crackling – but it really needed a second vegetable for me. Plus if you know me, you know I want proper gravy.

My accomplice scored it a 7.60, and I’m scoring the roast dinner (only) at The Camberwell Arms a 7.30 out of 10. There’s better places for a roast dinner, but this is an excellent venue. Go Monday to Saturday instead if you can, but if you have to go on a Sunday, it’s definitely still good – maybe add a side dish though. And definitely order dessert. It’s going on my Monday to Saturday to-do list.

I’ll be back next week. No definite plan yet, and perhaps I’ll be bankrupt by then anyway. Though the Sunday after is a special one…

In a parallel universe, President Harris is giving a speech on the importance of pronouns, which nobody is listening to, and the stock market keeps motoring along. President Harris has not declared a golden age, she hasn’t released her own coin, she isn’t selling a golden Harris credit card for $5m, nor is she spending half of her time and much American taxpayer money playing golf.