Roast Dinners in London

An ordinary week. An ordinary weekend. Another roast dinner review – this time of The Guildford Arms in Greenwich.

But next week (assuming you read this the same week I posted) we’ll all be excited, rushing back from our Sunday roasts to watch the enthralling match between Germany and Curaçao.

Hell, you could even fly over to Houston and watch the game live.

Tickets available for just £360.00 on Stubhub.

Or you could upgrade to a FIFA lounge for just $3,000.00.

Have you ever seen a more atmospheric place to watch football? Apart from the London Stadium, where West Ahhhhm United play, of course.

Or I guess you want to be more patriotic and support Eng-er-lund. They can be found for the bargain price of £650.00 each – only half a year’s roast dinners. Best be quick though, only 1,843 seats left for sale on Ticombo.

This is, of course, assuming you haven’t written anything about Trump being a pedo on your timeline. Or perhaps have even read this blog.

England vs New Zealand friendly in Florida: England fans stop the Mexican Wave.

— Steve Brewer (@sjbrewer.bsky.social) 2026-06-07T10:28:30.961Z

Ahhh England fans being good sports as always. I bet there’s nothing about Trump on those fans’ timelines. Nothing anti-Trump anyway #WhiteLivesMatter.

The Honourable Guild of the Yorkshire Pudding

So y’all excited about the FIFA World Cup?

I hope you appreciate my design skills getting Claude to design skills. Spent a whole 3 minutes on it. For you. And only you. Possibly it is actually only you reading.

It was a fairly rare solo dining afternoon for me, so I took a walk along the Thames from London Bridge, through Deptford and into Greenwich. To be rewarded with actual good beer.

Never heard of the brewery before, but it was just my kind of hazy pale ale, I think this one from Villages Brewery.

The Guildford Arms is a Regency-style pub (so I read, I’m not entirely sure what that means as I went to school in Hull, but it sounds good) with two floors – the main part of the pub is downstairs with a sizeable kitchen and sunken garden, it being summer (currently very much of the Eng-er-lund variety) I sat outside. It felt quite smart and modern, but also you could tell enough that you were close to Deptford, and it wasn’t overly Greenwich try-hardness.

The FIFA roast dinner menu is offered at an unknown price, until the roast dinner comes to you, but likely has an extra zero on the price because it is a World Cup Roast Dinner. And it would so have artichoke on it – though half the leaves would be missing, having been used as bribes.

Alternatively, the menu at The Guildford Arms was chicken at £20.00, beef rump at £25.00, pork belly at £22.00, slow-cooked and rolled lamb shoulder at £24.00, or nut roast at £20.00.

I’ve had pork the last two times so eschewed that, I’m never eating beef again in this country (at least while I can still remember my Japan holiday) and I cannot have a nut roast because I saw the Manosphere documentary last night and all I would have thought about is the guy in the Semen Retention Scheme or whatever it was. Not that I would order a nut roast otherwise.

So I went for the lamb.

The Fellowship of the Crispy Potato

Ahhh the wonders of al fresco dining. Ahhh the realities of someone on the next table lighting up a cigarette the minute my roast dinner arrives.

Starting with the carrots which had a nice balance to them – soft but some crunch also. They tasted a little sweet, perhaps there was honey or maple on them.

Then there was some tenderstem broccoli – charred from what looked like a charcoal grill when I walked past, and on the crunchy side, just a tad too much for my preferences.

So there was only two vegetables which is useful as I haven’t done half the things on my to-do list this weekend thanks to Friday night’s midnight fried chicken repeating on me from 3am onwards that night/morning. Didn’t happen with any of the fried chicken I had in Jap…oh that was last week’s blog.

The roast potatoes were passable. One tasted a bit stale but possibly that is just poorer potato quality at this time of year – and all felt a bit “cooked earlier”. Quite a bit earlier but nowhere near as some places.

The Guild of Gravy

For a second week in a row, the Yorkshire pudding was really good. I know! What is happening?

Freshly cooked and joyously small – if all pubs made the same size and quality yorkies, the savings in food waste would probably cancel out a year’s worth of emissions in this country. Maybe bear in mind I’m not an emissions expert. Oh and the yorkie was fluffy where it should be, and crispy on top. A delight.

Also a delight was the lamb. Rolled and apparently slow-cooked, I was marginally impressed with the presentation (not something I care about on a roast) but also it was really succulent, juicy – plus had some fatty bits which I love.

And the outside tasted a bit smokey too.

Finally, the gravy was a bit thinner than it looked, it wasn’t overly flavoursome but felt tomato-based and almost slightly fruity. It won’t go down as my favourite gravy, but it was proper gravy.

The Guildford Arms

So, a Sunday without too much to complain about. Well, not on the roast dinner anyway – I can think of the odd moron or ten, but that hasn’t changed from all the other 375 posts or whatever I’ve done.

The only thing to admonish is the roast potatoes, which were meh but edible, having been cooked quite a bit earlier.

Both the lamb and the yorkie were delicious, and I think there’s just about enough joy to push my rating into the 8’s.

I don’t normally allow an 8 or over if the roasties aren’t crispy, but the lamb and yorkie were that good, plus I had a gorgeous pale ale, I liked the vibe of the pub, there was a really good, spacious garden (for London standards) and even the waitress was hot. Yeah, half my age, I know, sigh.

A score for The Guildford Arms of 8.02 out of 10.

Right, I’m off to go borrow an England flag from a local lamppost, ready to cheer on England/ICE deportations/White Lives Matter/Rupert Lowe/JD Vance – or whoever/whatever Musk is promoting on X. I’ll be back next week…Young’s pub booked so offer me thoughts and prayers.

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