The Prince, Wood Green

Skip The Nonsense

Check it out, Lord Gravy in an area of London he’s never visited before – Wood Green. The Prince in Wood Green is a tip from a follower some time back.

Let’s get the politics bit out of the way.

Putin is a dictator. Trump is creating the dictatorship. Musk is a filthy bit of toerag.

MORONS.

Right, that’s the politics bit done. Maaaaayyyyyyybe.

Segueing from real stupidity to artificial intelligence, I recently decided to ask ChatGPT where the 10 best roast dinners in London were. You know, just to check out my competition – as much as I’d like to think everyone just comes to Roast Dinners In London to find out the best roast dinner in London, a few still seem to avoid this goldmine of roast research.

Well, 98.4% of people, according to Google, decide that there are better websites to find out about roast dinners from when searching for “best Sunday roast London” than Roast Dinners In London.

Which makes sense given the state of humanity at the moment, exemplified on my walk yesterday where I passed multiple “road closed” signs before seeing this.

Yep, “road closed” signs lead to a road that is closed. Yet car after car went past me, got to the actual road closed bit after driving past multiple “road closed” signs, then had to turn around.

I mean, there probably could have been some references to voting for Trump here. Yeah fuck it, let’s have some of those as well.

Ahhhh doesn’t that feel a tiny bit better?

The Prince Of Sacking People

Anyway, ChatGPT. I said to it, “name me the 10 best roast dinners in London”.

It sent a list of…9 places back. Of course. Thankfully Blacklock was the first – I am doing something right, and The Harwood Arms, which was almost as excellent.

Knife and The Great Chase both appeared too – both of which had respectable scores from me.

Then there are two on my to-do list – The Camberwell Arms and The Canton Arms – both have that “are they really roast dinners” kind of vibe, but both are probably very good.

Then there are places I’ve never heard of – The Old Red Lion in Kennington looks like it actually has thick gravy. Have you seen the gravy that I had this week at The Prince in Wood Green yet? Can you see it?

Also it recommends The Bull in Streatham – served in a bowl with watery/oily gravy – oh and it’s a Young’s pub. You know what I would rate that.

And then there’s Ye Olde Cherry Tree in Enfield…oh it’s closed down.

So a mixed bag but some very good suggestions on there. More importantly, does it know whether Lord Gravy is a legend?

Whether you believe those assertions, I will leave it up to you, though according to Claude my real name is Tom Bimpson. None of the other AI chat bot things I tried took a guess.

The Prince Of Sacking People Investigating Tesla and SpaceX

So it was my first time in Wood Green. Though my train wasn’t quite sure where I was going.

The Prince in Wood Green is a corner pub, decorated in one of the usual very dark greys that pubs are allowed to use, along with some exposed brickwork.

It has a slightly cramped dining area – it felt very busy, and it was certainly on the loud side for it. Plus it had plenty of babies, read to cry and scream. The bar side felt far more spacious, though diners were mostly not there.

Annoyingly, they had an excellent beer selection – like really good, even my bitter-drinking father would have appreciated it. Alas, Dry February continues for me. And then Dry March starts.

I was conflicted on the menu. I’m still awaiting my return to Budapest for teeth installation so sirloin of beef at £26.00 is a no-go. I had pork belly (£24.00) on the last review. The chicken was a sharer, priced at £46.00 and two others on the table wanted to share it. And the wild mushroom and Romanesco wellington, priced at £20.00, is vegetarian.

I asked the waitress for her recommendation, though she was vegetarian which didn’t help. And I was about to ask her if I’d regret not ordering the pork if I went for the vegetarian, but thought better of it, in the same way that I decide not to do Nazi salutes to people driving a Tesla.

The Prince Of Sacking People Investigating Russia

So there it was to be. I ordered the vegetarian – and our roasts took quite some time to arrive, a good 35-40 minutes.

Ooooh look at all that gravy.

Shall we start with the carrot and squash mash, which was pleasant and a tiny bit creamy. I would have loved a bit of seasoning, but you know the pressures that hospitality seem to be under nowadays.

Next up was the savoy cabbage – though not for me as it was too al dente for me to eat without any top teeth. Gosh I cannot wait for another 30 injections and my gums to be cut open again in a few week’s time. I should probably have took a bit more notice of dentistry experts when I was young. Meh, experts.

The Prince Of Sacking MAGA Supporters Who Thought Only DEI Jobs Were Going Awwww Bless

The roast potatoes looked good.

You know London chefs well enough by now though…

One was quite tough inside but I guess acceptable – the other was utterly turgid, very much of the cooked yesterday vibe. Curiously all 4 of us had a so-so spud, and a turgid tuber.

And no I didn’t care that I only got two potatoes.

The Yorkshire pudding was burnt. Is it worth elaborating? I ate a bit of it but it just tasted burnt.

So the vegetarian wellington was alright. I don’t have much to compare it too – it fell apart like I’d wish meat to, but I’m not sure that was a good thing here. The pastry was quite thin, not especially flaky, the content was crumbly – and I didn’t notice any Romanesco flavour.

The chicken however…

Yes I also had a chicken leg because one accomplice is doing some weird pregnant doctor’s advice diet thing, which makes my Dry February and healthy eating plan seem like a comedy night on a bouncy castle full of sexy naked people.

So the chicken was really good, crispy skin, soft and juicy chicken – plus some chimichurri sauce too. It might have helped if I had read the menu properly, as we could have had a 3 person chicken sharer…it was an option. But how am I supposed to know what I’ve voted for?

I’ve previously been jealous of vegetarian accomplices receiving thick gravy, but as you can see, The Prince in Wood Green deemed that I barely should have any gravy. I used the unwanted watery gravy of a chicken-eating accomplice and it tasted exactly the same as the wanted but not wanted watery gravy I had with my vegetarian (ie both tasted of nothing ness). This was surely just water with some brown stuff added to it.

This really was not gravy.

Jeez that meme has been on my desktop for 3 years…finally I’ve remembered to use it.

The Prince in Wood Green

Sigh. And I thought 2024 was a bad year for roast dinners.

I do really like the pub – if every pub had a beer selection like The Prince in Wood Green, we’d live in a happy world. Or those of us that prefer to eschew pints of mass-manufactured chemical crap would be, anyway.

All the staff were really cool, welcoming and patient with our quirks, plus they sold a pretty cool t-shirt too. If I lived locally, it would very happily be my local, and I’d be wearing the t-shirt.

There was actually quite a wide spread of scores on the table. My gravy-loathing accomplice doesn’t care if it comes with watery gravy, and scored hers an 8.50. My pregnant accomplice scored hers a 7.00, and my regular accomplice, who did really enjoy her beef (though not the vinegary horseradish) scored hers a 7.25.

Alas, the only part of the roast dinner I enjoyed wasn’t actually part of my roast dinner. Crap roasties, a burnt yorkie and watery gravy…sigh. I feel really harsh, but my score is a lowly 5.81 out of 10. Have I mentioned that I really like the pub though?

I’ll be back next week – a place that my boss tipped so I guess we’ll find out what he really thinks of me. Time to go write about the 5 things I accomplished last week, including releasing The Gravys.