The Jolly Gardeners, Putney

Skip The Nonsense

OMG the world is going to end, you evil, capitalist bastards. Yeah this is a green special. With a review of The Jolly Gardeners in Putney. Well, gardens are green, right?

OMG we are going to be Siberian in less than 20 years. Look, you didn’t give communism a chance. It was the wrong type of communism. Oh fuck, the article is 17 years old. That means…we are going to be Siberian in 3 years time?

Yes, I’ve escaped the clutches of my Halloween captors in Bracknell – seems that there is only so much banging on about the EU that they can cope with.

And now I find out that the world is going to end. Again. And I thought going to Toby Carvery was bad.

Oh actually we’ve got 100 months to act. Panic over. What? That was 144 months ago? Aaaaarrrrgggghhh, how am I going to get through the rest of my to-do list?

So there’s 50 days left? 10 years ago. Oh fuck.

Gosh you hate me already don’t you? But the amount of “x days to save the planet” claims that are long past their deadline are racking up almost as much as “our famous roast dinner” claims have past their deadline – usually with roast potatoes that were best a day before they were served.

No more flights for you

Yeah, I’m cynical. Yeah, your world famous roast dinner ain’t gonna be the best in London either, bruv. But I am green. I am environmentally friendly to fuck and I can prove it. Firstly – the banner on my website is green.

Second, the worst thing you can do for the environment is have children – and I’m aesthetically unshaggable. Long-haul flights with masks? Fuck that shit. Owning a car in London? Are you mental? I even have some vegan lunches. Not on a Sunday, obviously.

Not to mention trying to get people to sign up for Oddbox – saving the planet through reducing food waste. I do have shares in them so really it is just the evil capitalist in me. Oh and in BP. They are green too, right? They have a green logo like me.

Some Monday mornings, I’m like, “what shit am I going to fluff up my articles of exactly the same dinner as the previous 181 times around this week?”. But this week was obvious. Climate innit. I know, I’ve passed up the opportunity to theme the blog around Tory government corruption…I’ve a feeling that they’ll offer me another opportunity though.

And like all good corporations, I suddenly feel the need to wank off about how environmentally conscious I am. Because the world is going to end. And we are all going to be forced to holiday in Blackpool in the 2020’s.

Well…I did go to Whitehaven for 30 minutes this year, whilst on holiday.

How many times have you told me to fork off so far?

No more petrol for you

So The Jolly Gardeners is a pub in Putney, with a gardening theme inside – there are forks aplenty on the walls and some rustic watering cans too. Not to be confused with pubs of the same name in Earlsfield or Mortlake – though without giving too much away, perhaps in hindsight I wish we had been confused.

It’s one of those areas I’d describe as chi-chi even though I don’t know what that advective means. A Nordic cafe, a Sicilian restaurant, a baby photograph studio, a Waitrose – everything I don’t have in my local shithole of an area where people care so much about the environment that I can barely walk for all the litter and fly-tipping. Yeah, yet more area envy.

The Jolly Gardeners is quite a sizeable pub – though there were tables close to us, it felt spaced out also. Unlike the toilets which were rather small and cramped.

There was some form of beer choice, the usual crud amongst a couple more interesting beers, though nothing too independent – I ended up with a Cali Pale.

My eyes lit up when I saw that they did sides of pigs-in-blankets – but then disappointment struck when I saw those words, “red wine jus”. All the excitement of a handful of countries saying they are going to phase out burning of coal – only for Australia, China, Japan and India to be like, “nah mate, we’ll keep on spewing”.

Oh – and peas. You know I don’t trust evil green things, and no, I’m not referring to Insulate Britain – not only that, but the peas and leeks were together – so to not have peas, meant I had to sacrifice the leeks also. Sigh.

Given that the communist environmental miserabilists are probably going to ban beef as soon as they win an election, I thought it apt to choose the sirloin of beef at £18.50. That and I’d had a disappointing quality steak from my supposedly good local (ish) butcher the night before – so had some making up to do.

No more holidays for you

Our roasts took around 20 minutes to arrive:

There were four slices of carrot and they were…fine. Soft with a hint of pepper, but also that red wine jus.

I quite liked the cabbage. Except for it being in that red wine jus.

Parsnips were mixed, one was notably anaemic and undercooked, the other two were rather tired and on the cool side. Am I selling this to you or are you preparing to go sit on a motorway?

It gets worse. There were many small roast potatoes supplied – and they may have been good at some point. However, by time they were served to me (and it was a 1:30pm sitting – hardly late in the day) they were chewy and tired.

The Yorkshire pudding was like eating a rubber frisbee – which is not an enjoyable experience at all.

As you may be able to tell, the beef didn’t make up for the disappointing steak from the night before – this was overcooked and tough. A steak knife was required but not supplied – this was almost enough to make me wish that I’d ordered the vegetarian wellington with a side of pigs in blankets.

Speaking of which, I did actually enjoy the side-dish of pigs in blankets, albeit which cost £4.00. Bacon a bit crispy, sausages had a herby touch to them – in retrospect I should have asked for some ketchup with them instead of having them with the roast and its (oooh nearly put an apostrophe there) red wine jus.

So. Red wine jus. Oh jus, I do not like you. Occasionally I’ve had a nice jus, but this was some wanky, weird stuff that tasted slightly of burnt red wine. It detracted from an already poor roast.

Yikes.

No more meat for you

You could say that I was no more impressed with this roast than China, India and Russia are with the idea of reducing their emissions. By the way – I do believe in climate change, because my hero told me it was real.

I asked one of my accomplices, a fellow northerner, to give me a summary of her thoughts: “shit”. She scored it a 3 out of 10.

Her husband, on the other hand, was impressed with the amount of food, having both his roast and half his wife’s. He called it adequate and scored it a 7.5. I questioned him as to whether something “adequate” should really be scored a 7.5, and he moved down to a 6.5.

I was really quite disappointed. The beef was overcooked and tough, the roast potatoes chewy, the yorkie rubbery – the only thing I enjoyed were the pigs in blankets, and they were a side-dish at £4.00 extra.

OK, the carrots and cabbage were fine – but everything was worsened by a yucky red wine jus.

I’m scoring it a 5.20 out of 10. Yes, it is the worst roast dinner of 2021 – even worse than Toby Carvery.

I might be back next week, assuming the world hasn’t ended. The folks are down so it needs to be good…especially given the prices – £9.00 for a sausage roll.

(yeah, there is actually a problem, folks)