The Candlemaker – SMOK’D, Battersea

Skip The Nonsense

Time to get your eyes rolling, because I went for a SM’OAST at The Candlemaker in Battersea.

Put on your jeggings, I’m about to mansplain a snaccident. Firstly, fuck off with calling a roast dinner a “SM’OAST”.

Quite frankly the most disgraceful portmanteau I’ve seen in my lifetime, and the maximum score that The Candlemaker can now achieve is a 5/10, no matter how gorgeous the smoked meats might be (or might not be – for this is just the start of the review). And, no, I will not chillax. I’m HANGRY.

Well, at least that’s one award sorted for worst portmanteau, though I might also consider a nomination for Nobel Peace Prize now that’s been utterly devalued.

Gosh communism must be really shit if you need to metaphorically suck Donald Trump’s vertically-challenged penis.

On the bright side, the centuries-long dispute between Palestine and Israel is finally over, thanks to Donald Trump. All grievances have been settled, all peoples will live in peace, harmony and freedom forever. Justice will be served via international law, all terrorists will lay down their arms, all settlers will revoke their illegal land claims, and we’ll see Netanyahu in jail…ooooh…before I score a roast dinner more than 9.50 out of 10.

Moderately Great Expectations

You know, it would be quite funny if Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, won the Nobel Peace Prize next year, given that he actually did do some of the ground work on this peace deal, that will probably fall apart before I score a roast dinner more than 8.50 out of 10.

Anyway. A friend of mine give me the heads up about a BBQ meat place doing roast dinners a while back called SMOK’D, at a few different venues, not that he’d been, but thought it looked interesting, and the meats looked rather sexy on Google reviews, so it went on the to-do list with a bit more hope and expectation than average.

Inside The Candlemaker is a fairly old pub, chunks of it painted red, with some purposefully semi-grotty decoration, some old chairs, some uncomfortable seating, some Halloween decorations (already…still 3 weeks to go), plus this old school drinks board which must be a pain to update the prices on several times a day thanks to Joe Biden’s inflation.

I found the place kind of ugly, yet I’m sure others will find it charming. Except the toilets, which did rather stink. Then again, there are some weird people around though they are probably busy being local councillors for Reform UK.

And on the table…

Yes, kitchen roll. It is a BBQ place after all, but it did get me a little worried that I’d be eating a roast dinner with my hands.

The Old Curiosity Roast Dinner Menu

Well you’ve already seen the Sunday, urgh, SM’OAST, urgh, menu. But it certainly appealed.

Pork belly for £22.00, chicken for £22.00, beef rib for £26.00, vegan beef rib for £26.00 (WTF?) and some unknown vegan/vegetarian roast for £20.00, which was a wellington.

I was only ever going to choose the beef rib here.

Our roasts took around 25 minutes to arrive, and my moderately great expectations were dashed.

Urgh, let’s start with the carrots then which I thought might have been boiled but on look from the photograph may actually have been roasted. They were OK. Batons, possibly pre-packaged.

Parsnips were not OK. Again suspiciously baton-like, undercooked, paler than my arse cheeks before I got “BRITIAN TILL I DIE” tattooed on them at the Conservative Party conference last week, and dry inside.

The cabbage was alright (oooh I found a synonym for OK), rather wilted and limp but otherwise it was…OK.

Hard Times In Roast Dinner World

The cauliflower “cheese” was as mushy as the nose cone on my Airbus that attempted to fly from Faro to London last week, until it was violently attacked by a radical leftist stork.

Yeah we landed back at Faro and I had another day of crap airport beers to contend with. Granted…the outcome could have been worse.

Anyway, the cauliflower “cheese” was mushy and seemed to contain no cheese. Maybe it wasn’t even an attempt at cauliflower cheese, as the menu just says “all the trimmings” and the barman didn’t know what it came with. The barman was actually a really sound guy.

Shall I just move onto the potatoes because I’m struggling to finish describing the cauliflower “cheese”? Mushy. Meh.

Guess what?

Yeah they were turgid. There was some evidence of crispy sides, perhaps deep fried, perhaps an air fryer…I doubt roasted, but who knows. They were quite a bit undercooked and a bit dry, but I’ve had worse. That’s almost a compliment.

The Yorkshire pudding was pretty shit. Tough and like cardboard in texture – overcooked to an extent too.

Bleak House, Bleak Roast

There was a little circle of their meatloaf, which I actually quite enjoyed. I know, but I also quite enjoyed the shit red wine in a can on the Wizz Air flight (on the third attempt at getting back to London) even though it’s quite enduringly shit wine.

So don’t take this as too much of a compliment, but it was quite porky with a hint of some chilli or something spicy going on.

Surely I liked the beef rib?

Thankfully, the beef rib was reasonably excellent, despite looking a little coal-like. Lovely, tender meat that fell apart, some gooey fat in between, burnt on the ends to give it more texture but gloriously pink inside.

I have had more stunning beef rib before – the smoky flavour was good, but the sexual nature of this beef rib was more to do with the texture, and a bit less from the taste.

Quite where it was BBQ’d I have no idea, I couldn’t smell BBQ, there was no wafting of BBQ smoke anywhere near my nostrils.

My vegan accomplice didn’t really tell me much about hers, though it was a vegetarian wellington, and I saw it has bits of carrot in – it was the only thing she enjoyed on her plate.

Finally, the gravy was a duffer. It looked the part in terms of consistency, but was quite salty so assumedly was using granules and tasted of little else – we guess it was a vegetarian gravy. And you can stick that up ya SM’ECTRUM.

The Candlemaker

Is this the roast dinner universe paying me back for having too many holidays?

It’s now over 4 months since I’ve been able to score anywhere above an 8. The Candlemaker certainly doesn’t cut it.

The only thing I can really compliment on the plate (and I didn’t like the black bowl-like plate itself) was the beef rib, which had a gorgeous texture, but even that could have been a little less charcoal-ish on the outside, and could have tasted more “SMOK’D”.

My regular accomplice scored it a 5.80, my vegan accomplice a 7.00, and my score is a 5.75 out of 10.

Do I have anything nice to say? Well the barman was cool and had vibe about him, he was very on it with service too, despite being the only person working – then again, it was pretty quiet. Quiet enough to raise my suspicions when I went inside that all may not be too good.

Beer was the usual guff, though they did also have their own make of pale ale, and hazy IPA on – the former was respectable.

Next week’s plan is to go to a pub which is walk in’s only. Which feels like my plan might need a back-up plan. Ahhh, we can dream of better times ahead.