The Hunter S, Dalston

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.

Skip The Nonsense

Welcome to the first roast dinner review from Tier 2 – this time from The Hunter S in Dalston. London being in Tier 2 meant that I could only go with my housemate – alas she’s goes to a different type of church to me on a Sunday, one with Jesus and stuff, but thankfully 2 new housemates moved in during the morning and were very keen to come with me to Dalston for a business meeting.

Oh, before I go on, this review is NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Assuming you are reading in 2022 and people have actually gone back to the office.

I arrived a bit earlier than my new housemates as they had, erm, gone shopping on route – I felt like I was smuggling drugs into a festival (not that I have ever done that, obviously, I’m just guessing what that feels like), and walked around the block before going in – but the urge to urinate was too much to be able to wait outside for my new housemates.

Shit, wrong toilet.

Well this was supposed to be my Halloween special, but you know, tits and stuff. I even had a witch joining me for dinner. I mean, one of my new housemates is a witch. A self-styled witch, but a very nice person, in case she is reading. Oh gosh, this isn’t starting well is it? And now WordPress is refusing to upload the nipple shot but has accepted the man porn.

Urgh, Monday morning. That’s better now. Can you tell I’ve not been laid in years?

Hunting for my sex life

Anyway, enough about my sex life, as there isn’t much to talk about – I can barely even be bothered to load up Pornhub nowadays. Let’s talk about the toilets in The Hunter S. The men’s were decorated with photographs of mostly exceptionally attractive women in exceptionally attractive states of undress. The women’s likewise with men, though as a not very raging heterosexual I am unable to comment on their attractiveness, but I think my guests appreciated them. You want more photos?

Struggling to keep my mind on the review. One more?

Just ordered a similar hair piece on Etsy. I might spend the cumming (sigh) weekend recreating all the images but in a fat, ugly, slightly camp way and send them to The Hunter S so they can sexually balance out their toilet experience. Speaking of Cummings:

Right, I assume that you are no longer horny and are ready to read about roast dinners.

The Hunter S is almost unique amongst London establishments in that it doesn’t have an Instagrim page. Nor a Twitter page. They do have a Facebook page but they haven’t updated it since prior to the London Olympics. Leap years are not always this bad or 2016 kinda bad, folks.

They also have a website which doesn’t seem to have been updated since the Dotcom crash. The Dotcom crash was when the NASDAQ spiked really high and there was loads of money being thrown at dodgy IPOs – totally unlike 2020 and I can assure you that the current valuation of Tesla as being worth more than all other car companies in the world put together (ish) is totally normal. If anyone reading has billions spare then I would advise you to invest in Jinko Solar. This is not financial advice, FYI. Let me know when you have so I can sell my holding at a massive profit. Well…enough to fund a roast dinner or two.

You’re here for the history lesson and my investment advice, right?

Anyway, The Hunter S responded to my e-mail pretty much instantly and a table was booked.

Hunting for human life

It was worryingly quiet when we arrived. Sadiq Khan’s dream of a nullified hospitality industry in London seemed to be coming true.

We were shown to our table, which awkwardly had 6 chairs crammed around a table suited for 4 people. Otherwise the pub was charming, it had this outward feel that maybe it was a dive pub 30 years ago, yet had been decorated for the more discerning Dalstonite of modern days, replete with peacock taxidermy, amongst other stuffed animals – though the peacocks always stand out to me.

It wasn’t always easy to attract the attention of staff, though that was mainly due to the grateful fact that The Hunter S became busy, we even encountered a female Mario lookalike – solo dining. Hmmm, maybe I could be a male Peach and need rescuing from Bowser.

Sunday roasts came in 4 main choices, lamb, chicken, beef fillet and pork belly. For some reason I’d already decided that next Sunday I’m having lamb, the previous roast at The Drapers Arms I had pork belly, so chicken and beef were left – The Hunter S didn’t feel like a beef pub, so I went for the corn-fed chicken at £16.50.

I think the roasts took around 20-30 minutes to arrive, and we had a mixture on the table of lamb, chicken and beef between us.

Starting with the carrot, as often is. Now, after reviewing carrots around 143 times out of 153 roast dinner reviews, I am always heartened to have something different. This time, the roasted carrot tasted of aniseed, perhaps Star Anise to be exact, though I’m not a chef. Did I like it? I’m not sure. But I did like that it was something different, so kudos for that.

The cabbage was pretty unremarkable, the bits of leek were nice, but again unremarkable.

Hunting for cutting

The green beans (we had some confusion upon ordering when I asked for no peas – “no beans”? No, no peas. “You want something other than beans?” No, just no peas. “So no peas or beans?”. Just no peas.) needed a steak knife to cut them. I should probably write that sentence in whole. The green beans needed a steak knife to cut them. Maybe you like them this tough and undercooked – some people do. I don’t.

Oh fuck it’s 2020 and I need to prove that I’m anti-racist, hang on.

Phew. So the parsnip puree was interesting. Like, not interesting in a voting against free school meals kind of interesting. Sloppy, earthy and a bit peppery.

The roast potatoes are my Bowser and I need rescuing from them. These were very good roast potatoes at some point, whenever they had been made. But they felt tired like they had been lying around for a fair while. I seem to say this almost every week. And at least they were edible – they were good at some point and you could tell this. But I want freshly cooked, crispy roast potatoes and these were not fresh.

The Yorkshire pudding was pretty good. A tad overdone and tearable on the top, but quite soft on the bottom.

And the chicken was hearty – plump and good quality chicken, with a peppery flavour and a hint of thyme, at least that I picked out anyway. The breast a tad dry but not to the point of disturbing me (I’m already pretty disturbed and we haven’t even mentioned Brexit yet). I’ve had better but I’ve also had much worse.

Finally, the gravy. It was an inoffensive, decent enough gravy. It had some consistency and added some value to the roast, but I won’t remember this come next week – I struggle to remember it now.

The summary of The Hunter S and their roast dinner

The Hunter S is a very likeable pub – if this was my local I’d be very content indeed. It really does have a proper pub feel to it.

Their roast dinner was decent enough. It scores highly on quantity, attempted something different with the carrots and left me fairly satisfied, if unexcited.

Green beans were difficult to eat, the roasties need to be fresher but otherwise not much offended me. However, my highlight is cunnilinigus-related instead of culinary-related.

I’m scoring it a 7.01 but it only creeps above the 7 mark due to the toilet art. My accomplices scored it a 7.2 and 6.9.

I shall be back next Sunday with my Goodbye Trump special, and with only my support bubble for company so chill out stasi and stop telling me to stay the fuck home. Oh wait, you’re breaking the rules too now, aren’t you?

Anyone for watermelon?