Roast Dinners in London

Good afternoon, you charming seeker of gravy-soaked truths, and welcome to this week’s review, of The Old Ship in Hackney.

It is perfectly easy to be cynical in this modern day, for society is full of problematic trends.

We have countries sucking up to an obese paedophile by showering him gold-plated gifts in the hope of being bullied a bit less than other non-dictatorships are.

Then we have multi-billionaires spreading race-hate quicker than a Mein Kampf printing factory could ever dream of.

And, of course we a murderous dictator advising a rapey wannabe dictator who has just hosted and defended another murderous dictator of the peace plan that he needs to enforce on a country that the original murderous dictator invaded.

But possibly the most pernicious is all pubs seem to have been inspired by Rachel Reeves and now have an extra gravy tax.

Oh, and at the same time they are getting too lazy to do a different gravy for vegetarians than for meat eaters.

And two of these occurred at The Old Ship. BIG FUCKING PROBLEMS.

Ah! That must be Aunt Bessie.

Granted, I would happily accept a gold-plated gravy boat in exchange for reviewing a pub. Hell, make it solid gold and I might sneak an extra 0.1 onto the score. Yep, even Lord Gravy can be bought.

The Old Ship is a pub and hotel hidden away from the more tatty roads near Hackney Central, almost like a Hampstead-ish little oasis of calm.

It’s a bright pub inside thanks to the skylight, solid tables and chairs, attentive staff – oh and a £1.50 charge for extra gravy. Oh Rachel, why do you have to tax everything?

The beer choice was pretty ordinary, of which I was quite thankful for I needed a break after a few Sunday Fundays in a row. A pint of Yes sufficed, which is pleasantly fresh for the first half but soon gets tiring.

On the menu was beef sirloin at £21.50, pork belly at £21.50, roast chicken at £19.50 or a beetroot, butternut squash nut wellington at £19.00.

Or at least that was my menu.

On my accomplice’s menu was beef rump instead of sirloin. To have one menu may be regarded as a misfortune; to have two conflicting menus looks like carelessness.

I ordered the pork belly anyway.

Quiet piggy.

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

Shall we start with the carrots. That isn’t a question, and the carrots were maple-glazed affairs, roughly in the middle of being crunchy and soft – and pretty enjoyable.

Likewise the parsnips, actually they were thoroughly enjoyable, sweet and nutty like all good parsnips should be – and of good quality. Maple-glazed also, though less notable than the carrots.

The cabbage was a bit whatever, quite stringy, very wilted – though nothing wrong per se.

Finally for the vegetables the swede and squash mash was fun, an almost-fruity taste and quite creamy. I did enjoy this.

It is perfectly easy to be cynical about roast potatoes – though this is not a 2025-specific trend. You might have thought by now that roast potato standards would have improved in London with the amount of shaming I’ve done, but alas.

The two smaller ones were ok, quite crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, but clearly not par-boiled – if you told me they were from a freezer packet, I wouldn’t tell you that you’ve been spending too long reading about 9/11 on X.

The two larger ones were more notably chewy and dry. Not good, but…I’ve had far worse.

In matters of gravy importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

The Yorkshire pudding looked like it had been under a heat-lamp, though also tasted like it had been in a fridge – for it was cold.

Yet actually it was really good, once you got past the Quaver-like upper part. Quite a thin body which helped, and a tasty eggy bottom to it, which was delightful (ish) with the gravy.

The pork belly was more of a pork steak style – gosh I do love the tender gluttony of pork belly, and this often shone through.

Yet there were some imperfections – the crackling was more chewy than crunchy and a bit of the pork was on the dry side…minor discrepancies.

My accomplice ordered the beef, which came bleeding and they offered to flash it in the pan – of which my accomplice accepted, probably to her error. It was quite fatty in places, but decent enough.

I’m not going to bring peace to Ukraine at any time soon, but I can at least have some dubious and tiny influence over the gravy standards in London.

Let’s state first that this was a gloriously thick gravy, the likes of which I spent around the first 5 years of this blog demanding, and for which does sometimes happen now – and jus is rare. But also it was an onion gravy. I liked the flavour, though there was probably too much salt involved (or maybe some granules?) – as I can still taste it on my tongue a few hours later.

BUT STOP SERVING VEGETARIAN GRAVY WITH MEAT ROAST DINNERS.

And charging for extra gravy…but that’s a battle we’ve lost.

The Old Ship

I had fairly moderate expectations of The Old Ship, and these expectations were more or less achieved. One should not go to the best places every week – in fact one feels like one is due a rant-worthy roast dinner, but this is neither glory or fury.

Of course one should rant about the new trend of enforcing vegetarian gravy on meat-eater, and the now-common northerner tax. Plus average beer. Oh and roast crud, tasting of potato.

Yet there was plenty to like here, from really good parsnips, to a surprisingly eggy yorkie, thick gravy and mostly gluttonous pork belly. It isn’t a Hackney-beating roast dinner, but it is respectable enough.

My accomplice scored her a 7.05 – I thought my pork belly was notably better than her beef, and my score is a 7.28 out of 10.

No roast dinner next week as I’ll be too busy with my newly expanded tax bill (and maybe visiting relatives not in London). I’ll be back the week after, at, erm, with my most impeccable timing, the most expensive roast dinner in a long time. Cheers, Rachel.

The suspense will be terrible…I hope it will last.