Jo Rodgers tracks down the finest roast lunches in London's smartest postcodes to see you through the winter.
Before things really heat up, I need to start with a word about location bias, because the best Sunday lunch is one from which you can get home with minimal friction. I live with my family in west London and the places I am loyal to tend to be in that part of town.
I’m full of other biases, too. For instance, that Sunday lunch should feel domestic and a little frowsy, regardless of whether you’re eating with relatives. You should be at ease, leaning in, accidentally dragging an elbow through mustard. The service shouldn’t be stiff and the guests, if they can help it, shouldn’t be too demanding. There are plenty of first-rate restaurants that do not foster that type of familiarity and none of them are on this list.
The food doesn’t need to be a traditional roast (although I am crazy about a traditional roast), but, whatever it is, it should not be overworked. Sunday lunch is nursery food. The natural home of cauliflower cheese, apple-and-blackberry crumble, honeyed chipolatas beside pots of toothpicks.
These are places where I go with my young sons, fussy uncles, parents, in-laws and childhood friends. These are places to which I would be happy taking anyone.
For the gourmand: The Harwood Arms, SW6
The only Michelin-starred pub in London is inconspicuous from the outside, set on the corner of a residential street in Fulham, a few minutes on foot from the illustrious headstones in Brompton Cemetery. Scotch eggs are a speciality of the kitchen, which turns out venison and vegetarian versions, and almost everybody starts with them: they’re fried to order and jammy in the middle, served with homemade dipping sauces.
Photo: Lateef Okunnu
The Sunday roasts are sized for two to share, although the pub is good natured about splitting things up if you get stuck on beef vs pork loin (if you want my take, get the beef). A board piled with meat, roasted carrots, cabbage, potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and a tall pewter pitcher of gravy is set between you and whoever came with you, together with a molten, cast-iron dish of the best cauliflower cheese you’ve had in your life. It’s cooked with five cheeses (Durrus, Perl las, Castello blue, Lincolnshire poacher and Quicke’s cheddar) and breadcrumbs made from yesterday’s soda bread. This is Sunday lunch for the person with a reflexive internal ranking system for roast potatoes. It will not miss.
020–7386 1847; harwoodarms.com
For anyone who loves a Yorkshire pudding, but not a shouty pub: Claridge’s Restaurant, W1
Do not be fooled by the Italian-marble floors, the starburst stained-glass windows set into the ceiling or the sleek green banquettes with canoodling little café lamps. Claridge’s Restaurant does a Bacchanalian, bathed-in-creamed-cabbage-type Sunday roast. Where most places turn out a handful of trimmings, here the kitchen does them all: roast potatoes, Chantenay carrots, sautéed broccoli and green beans; Yorkshire puddings, cauliflower cheese and that cabbage I mentioned, which comes studded with bacon.
Photo: Claridge’s
Roast chicken is the headliner and it arrives genteelly broken down, with salt-cracked skin. Sure, there are white tablecloths and the gravy boat is sterling silver, but refinement is reserved for the setting and for the gliding, deeply un-pub-like servers who can’t do enough for you. The food is heart-racing, palmy, swaggering.
020–7107 8848; www.claridges.co.uk
For the trailblazer: The Pig’s Ear, SW3
The three Gladwin brothers (Richard, Oliver and Gregory, who also have a hand in, among other things, Sussex restaurant in Soho, The Shed in Notting Hill and Nutbourne winery in West Sussex) opened their latest restaurant, The Pig’s Ear, on a residential street in Chelsea this year. It replaced a ho-hum, similarly named pub, The Chelsea Pig, and you can tell some of the locals are still finding out about this, as they survey menus offering (excellent) devilled quail eggs, fresh oysters and house-made chorizo, which you are meant to smear onto a charred baguette with a swoosh of strained yoghurt. It’s terrific, particularly with a glass of wine, but this is unmistakably a food-focused kitchen now.
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Beef tartar comes from retired animals and the burrata, unspoolingly fresh, is made in west London. The Sunday-lunch plate arrives with meat, a single blackened carrot and Yorkshire pudding in a paddling pool of gravy, with communal trimmings piled separately on a board in the centre of the table.
020–3026 0466; www.pigsearpub.com
For the romantic: La Poule au Pot, SW1
Contrary to its press clippings, you don’t need to be on a date to love La Poule au Pot — I like it fine for a night out, but it’s just as much of a charmer in the daylight, when you can appreciate what a winsome, neighbourhoody place it is. In the summer, garden furniture is set with mismatched crockery in leafy Orange Square and, in the winter, you move inside to tables covered with brown paper, candles flicking beneath baskets of dried hydrangeas.
Photo: La Poule au Pot
I’ve had the same order since shortly after university, when my husband and I rented a two-up, two-down cottage around the corner from the restaurant: onion soup, suprême de poulet (which comes in a tarragon cream sauce, with a split dish of peas and mashed potatoes on the side — the type of thing you might see in a fancy dining hall) and apple tart, served with a standalone bowl of freshly whipped cream.
The staff go out of their way to be gracious with children, remembering names and popping straws into glasses of milk. After one lunch, our server took £5 out of a tip we had left and handed it back to our gobsmacked four year old. He’s still talking about it.
020–7730 7763; www.pouleaupot.co.uk
For gardeners and walkers: Petersham Nurseries, TW10
A mind-bogglingly picturesque garden centre as well as a restaurant, Petersham Nurseries sits on a bend of the River Thames, separated from the water by a meadow full of Belted Galloways. There’s a countrified walking path along the river that runs for several miles, past 17th-century Ham House and down to Teddington Lock, and it makes a wholesome coda to lunch. On weekends, you’ll see groups in the restaurant wearing walking gear and dogs (welcome with notice) waiting under the tables.
Photo: Petersham Nurseries
The food is broadly Italian, but with a fresh, veg-forward simplicity that spotlights the produce (much of which comes from the Haye Farm organic estate in Devon, operated by the son of the owners). Expect things such as rare roast beef over mash, topped with butter-browned girolles, and Cornish sole with tomato salad. There isn’t a special menu on Sundays, but Sunday is the best day to come — it’s always packed and people can’t seem to believe their luck to be in there. There are more toasts, more babies and more pudding courses going around.
020–8940 5230; https://petershamnurseries.com
For the traditionalist: The Surprise, SW3
If we haven’t made a plan and the yen for sticky toffees strikes, The Surprise is where we try to get a table. It sits majestically at one end of a residential square in Chelsea, with Christ Church holding Sunday services at the other, and is neither a lah-di-dah restaurant nor a drinking den. The food is comforting above anything else; on weekdays, it’s a place you’d meet someone for hot chunky chips and oversized glasses of red wine. Sunday roasts are traditional down to the ground, from the buoyant Yorkshire puddings to the plain-Jane bread sauce (just like at home).
Not feeling roast-y? The burgers look good too… Photo: The Surprise, Chelsea
It’s unusually good looking inside, with ruddy pink walls and a wood-burning fire, and attracts some destination diners and tourists. But mostly we notice mister what’s-his-name from one road over, with the yappy dogs, or the older couple a few doors down from us, who we sometimes see having supper at home, candles lit, in their basement dining room. There are almost always a few Chelsea Pensioners at the tables, handsome in their scarlet coats. It’s our local and it’s a balm to be there.
020–3837 4600; www.thesurprise-chelsea.co.uk
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