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[title]Sunday afternoon. A man is bringing roasts to our table of hungover, hungry people, his hands shaking like that superannuated waitress in Victoria Wood’s ‘Two Soups’ sketch. He’s moving slowly enough that we can get a good long look at what’s coming before it lands in front of us. It’s not a sight for sore eyes.
Two parched slices of pork, cracked like the kind of dried up lake you see in depressing Attenborough documentaries. Three roasties – a Victorian child’s ration – looking somehow pale and burnt at the same time, in a way only white Brits on holiday typically manage. Then there’s the obligatory parade of vegetables – wrinkled peas, suspiciously uniform carrots – clearly kept alive by the life support of the deep freeze long after their natural expiry date. The gravy slops messily down the side of its jug in a flawed bid to join some other, tastier meal. My booziest friend is so hungover he ‘wants to die’ and this grim plateful might well push him over the edge.
Bad pub roasts have always happened to good people, but it feels like finding a decent rendition of Britain’s most famous dish is harder than ever in 2023. On average, more than two pubs have closed every day this year. They have to reckon with labour shortages, higher energy bills, and lower midweek traffic – all of which put them under extra pressure to turn a profit when Sunday rolls round.
The gravy slops messily down the side of its jug in a flawed bid to join some other, tastier meal
My recent roast experience left me with food poisoning and a sense that my nostalgia had tricked me into a disappointing meal. And when I complained about it to my friends, pretty much everyone had a similar story.
‘I booked a £35-a-head roast in Hackney with friends and what arrived was one of the most abysmal plates of food I have ever seen. The waiter looked visibly terrified of serving it to us,’ said Ella, showing me snaps of a prison canteen-worthy plate of straight-from-frozen turkey slices and sad veg to back up her tale of woe.
Head to a fancy gastropub and you’re more likely to get a respectable roast, but less likely to get time to actually enjoy it. ‘I was rushed away from my table with military levels of precision when our 90 minute time slot was up,’ complained Liv. ‘When you’ve spent the whole week looking forward to a roast, you want to be able to mull it over in a leisurely way.’
‘Ordering a roast in London on any given Sunday is mostly an anxiety-filled, awkward encounter, where you leave £45 lighter and you know with absolute certainty you could’ve made much better at home,’ concluded Ella.
But can we really do better at home? ‘The Times’ reported that ingredients for a Sunday roast for a family of four now costs £38.16: a 15 percent increase from last year. That’s not factoring in the time, stress, and the fact that many London homes don’t have a proper dining table, or ovens big enough to supply a bounteous range of meats and sides.
Maybe roasts are a relic of a different era, one where England ground to a halt on Sundays while balding, brace-wearing Dads hacked apart a joint of beef and their mogadon-doped wives wearily passed round bowls of greying vegetables, as ‘Songs of Praise’ tinkled drearily from the radio.
‘I hate roasts,’ said comedian Fern Brady on Time Out’s Love Thy Neighbourhood podcast. ‘When you’re living in a city that has the best and biggest variety of restaurants, from Ethiopian to South Indian… to go “I’ve gotta have some gravy poured over some meat and plain potatoes,” it’s so depressing. It’s a national delusion that’s emblematic of the English sense of grandeur, having a shit thing and pretending it’s so much better than it is. It’s just so flavourless and so boring.’
So why do we collectively do it to ourselves? Okay, forgive me for a moment while I get earnest. In a largely post-religious society, our lives are dictated by the miserable rituals of capitalism, from the grating buzz of your morning phone alarm, to the trudge through work emails, to the last bleary eyed swipe through Instagram.
I’m going to keep ordering roasts, for the same reasons I keep buying Heinz beans instead of their unbranded rivals
Having a Sunday roast is a secular rite, one that’s based on joy, not obligation. It’s a way of connecting with our caveman need to gather around a big hunk of meat (or dubious protein-based substitute). It’s a social thing, a getting-together thing, a moment to create a temporary family in one of London’s gorgeous, embattled, history-filled pubs. Plus, pretty much anything tastes delicious if you cover it with enough horseradish and gravy, and I say that as someone who’s eaten nut roasts so dry that even the most ravenous winter squirrel would send them back to the kitchen with a disdainful wave of his paw.
So I’m going to keep ordering roasts, for the same reasons I keep hanging out with flaky friends, or doggedly wear non-waterproof coats in the London drizzle, or loyally buy Heinz baked beans instead of their equally delicious, far cheaper unbranded rivals. I’m not a highly optimised, flashing-eyed efficiency robot, I’m a human being. And if my irrational hunger for a Sunday roast leads me to empty pockets, food poisoning, and/or the disdain of people raised within other, probably better food traditions, so be it. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Read more: The best Sunday roasts in London