Roast Dinners in London

Welcome back to Roast Dinners in The Part Of London Somewhere Close To Where The Train From Hull Arrives (shall I get yet another domain name that I won’t ever use?), this week featuring The Marquis Cornwallis in Bloomsbury.

So how does one decide to go for a roast dinner?

For you, this is easy. You look at the League Of Roasts.

Or you check out the maps page and use the filter to see the good ones nearby.

Or you look at the best roasts lists, such as “best roast dinner in south London“.

Heck, you can even use the Find A Roast feature, a fairly rudimentary but interactive feature. Yeah, Claude made it, don’t judge but at least I spell-check my AI stuff:

The Baron Yorkshireis

So it’s easy for you, but not so much for oneself, at least not this weekend.

Normally I use the random number generator to pick somewhere from my to-do list. But I was travelling from Hull, and didn’t fancy a mission to Bow. Then I didn’t fancy a mission to Wood Green. Nor did I fancy a mission to Chelsea.

Also solo-dining, and it did pick somewhere I know will be really good…so I didn’t want to use that one up.

I then thought maybe go old school, and ask Trip Advisor (lol, I know) what the best roast dinner near King’s Cross was – and it suggested The Betjeman Arms. A Young’s pub. The last time I went to a Young’s pub, it was the worst roast dinner of the year:

I then tried…Google! Remember Google searches?

The first suggestion that I hadn’t previously reviewed was The Fellow.

Guess what? A Young’s pub.

Exasperated, semi-hungover and wondering why the fuck I spend hours and thousands of pounds a year on this blog, I then just randomly clicked pubs on Google Maps, until I thought maybe The Marquis Cornwallis could be worth a shout.

And that’s the not especially interesting story about how I chose this. I bet it is quite typical of those who never discover my blog.

The Duke Devonis

Besides, who cares if my introduction is boring, because you’ve seen the anaemic potatoes in the photograph, regular readers (how/why etc etc) will know where this is going.

But let’s pretend we’ve no idea, and this might be the best roast dinner of my life.

It started great – a DEYA on draught. A really tasty pale ale. Although when I enquired about the table I had booked, I was told to go look for it myself by a grumpy barmaid. OK…

So on the menu was beef rump at £23.00, chicken at £21.00, pork belly at £22.00 and a vegetable, cranberry and nut roast at £20.50.

If I ever eat beef again after the amazing wagyu on my holiday to Japan, it won’t be at a random pub somehow rated 4.6 on Google Maps (it does have good beer though), pork belly I had last week, and for some reason I decided to have a vegan wrap on my way to Hull – which was the epitome of the caricatured dry vegan food that meat-eaters accuse vegans of loving, which is me saying I wasn’t having my first vegetarian roast dinner of the year either.

Dry as fuck but it did have a nice spicy aftertaste. Get used to the words “dry as fuck” for the rest of this review.

Oh and I do know why I went for the vegan roll, as I nearly bought empanadas but saw the little Argentinian flag on the menu so sacked that off as still not over Brexit the World Cup, panicked and bought the next thing I saw.

Oh, and I ordered chicken.

The Earl Essexis

It wouldn’t have been that much extra effort to go to one of the places in Chelsea on my to-do list that look good.

Let’s get started with the carrots, which were fine, they only tasted of carrot and were crunchy – but nothing to hate.

The pile of stringy cabbage which you cannot see, but also you don’t need to see, was a bit raw and undercooked. I didn’t eat much of it.

Onto the parsnips – two weeks in a row pubs have attempted parsnips in the middle of the hottest, sunniest summer ever. Why? We have not had a frost yet. We have barely had a day under 30’C, or at least it seems like it – oh, and yeah the parsnips were predictably turgid. Dry as fuck and chewy as Stewie.

I. AM. LOSING. THE. WILL.

Yes I know this is my fucking fault. My fucking choice. I could have spent an extra bit of time on the tube and gone somewhere recommended to me.

I don’t know where to begin with the roast potatoes. Dry as fuck. Chewy. The two really small ones were kind of alright to be fair, but the 3 medium sized ones were all some kind of combination of anaemic, dry and/or chewy. If these were not pre-prepared and stored in a freezer then I’m running a government department in India. By the way, not wanting to be overly woke in 2026 as Evil Musk will probably label me as an enemy of the (white) people, but why is the pub named after someone who instituted racism in India during colonisation?

The Viscount Somersetis

Are you glad you persevered after my pointless and dull introduction?

The competition is tough, but I think this is the worst Yorkie pudding of the year – certainly the…hang on…why have I not mentioned the tiny fucking gravy boat yet?

STOP THE SMALL GRAVY BOATS.

Where was I? Probably the worst Yorkshire pudding of the year so far, but let’s not pretend I remember them all. Almost certainly the one I ate least of, the bottom part was cold, chewy and dry – there was not enough gravy to rescue it, even dipping it in my DEYA wouldn’t have helped. And the sides were just dead.

So the chicken…actually was quite nice. It wasn’t the best quality chicken, you can tell their sourcing of ingredients at The Marquis Cornwallis isn’t exactly top notch (also just realised it is a Mitchells And Butlers pub…hmmm), but away from the quite bony and undergrown nature of the chicken itself was quite a juicy bit of chicken, and there was quite a strong herby flavouring – the same kind of flavour that you might get on a really nice Italian porchetta, quite aromatic.

There was a coin of stuffing – I didn’t notice much flavour though it was dry. Not as fuck though.

Finally, the gravy – this wasn’t dry as fuck but there was very little of it. A rich red wine gravy – not my vibe but it was alright, quite thick and jus-like. I need a sit down.

The Marquis Cornwallis

There is a reason I have a to-do list, which is because either I’ve seen recommendations on social media that actually look decent, or someone has recommended it to me.

There is a reason I normally don’t just semi-randomly pick pubs. There is a reason this blog exists, so you don’t have to go through this kind of suffering. I will, eventually be knighted, or at least become Marquis Croydonis. That actually has quite a ring to it, doesn’t it?

What did I enjoy at The Marquis Cornwallis? Well, I enjoyed the beer and the flavour on the chicken was actually really good, dreamily herby.

But then…deep breath…raw parsnips, dry as fuck potatoes probably from a freezer, cold and chewy yorkie, a tiny gravy boat.

Urgh. I probably enjoyed that vegan roll more.

I didn’t need to go here. I could have done something better with just a little more energy/motivation. My score is a 4.10 out of 10. Were it not for the effort on the chicken, this would have been in the 3’s. As it is, it’s the worst roast dinner of 2026. So far.

Next Sunday is a recommendation from a reader that was e-mailed to me recently. It has to be better than this. Surely?