20 brilliant places for a Sunday roast

From country pubs to upscale city hotels, here’s where to find the best

The traditional Sunday roast was once the preserve of the home cook, but for many of us, the highlight of the weekend now is meeting friends and family and letting someone else peel the spuds for once. The only tricky bit is deciding where to go.
Do you please the traditionalists for whom a roast isn’t a roast without roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and gravy? Do you try something different? Or do you really want a bit of both? Whatever you’re after, you’ll find inspiration in our guide to 20 of the best places in the UK to get a Sunday roast. From country pubs with roaring fires to Michelin-starred restaurants and luxury hotels, we’ve got just the place for you.
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Double carbs? Get out of here. Make it triple carbs at Deptford’s Buster Mantis, home of the original Jamaican Sunday roast. A mash-up of a Jamaican Sunday lunch and a traditional British one, your choice of roast – chicken with stuffing, lamb and mint sauce, pork belly and apple sauce – comes with all the trimmings, namely seasonal vegetables, rice and peas, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, and gravy (from £22.50). If that’s not enough, add sides of mac and cheese, plantain, and coleslaw. Then roll home.
Best for: Carb loading
They don’t do things by halves in the Art Deco dining room at Claridge’s. A three-course Sunday lunch might come in at £100 – £85 if you stick to two courses – but when your whole Norfolk chicken comes with truffle stuffing and your grilled halibut with smoked caviar, who’s to argue? Chef Simon Attridge dishes out big helpings; it’s a wonder the tables don’t collapse under the weight of all the sides, never mind the puds (of which you get five). Plumped cushions provided for sinking into afterwards.
Best for: A special occasion
Wandering around in search of a decent roast in Zone 1 is strictly for tourists. Those in the know head straight for the dining room at The Devonshire Arms, the most talked about pub in London. When it comes to roasts, this Soho boozer doesn’t mess around; it’s rib of beef (£29.50) including pneumatic Yorkies, roast potatoes, peas, leeks and carrots. There is a good choice of starters and puds, including two of the DA’s best known signatures: scallops, bacon and malt vinegar (£16) and sticky toffee pudding (£8). Note: they switch back to their regular menu for Sunday evenings.
Best for: Guinness-lovers – The Devonshire pours the best Guinness in London.
You’ll want to walk around nearby Victoria Park twice to work up an appetite big enough for the mighty schnitzel roast at east London gastropub The Hawke. Like all the best ideas, this wickedly ingenious hybrid came about by accident, when they ran out of roasts so had to offer their signature chicken schnitzel with all the trimmings instead. Lo, a legend was born. The £25 schnitty roast comes with carrots, cabbage, Yorkshire pudding, gravy and secret green sauce.
Best for: Bloody Marys
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Chef Ali Munro, resident chef at Alberta’s, can do you a classic(ish) roast with all the trimmings – pork belly and cheek, sirloin and ox cheek, or a vegan-friendly ratatouille – but he’s best known for Brighton’s only whole fry (£24pp). Prepare for a whole local chicken, southern-fried, and served with greens, roast roots, Yorkshire puddings, tatties, pork sausage and unlimited gravy. Phew! Pre-order to avoid disappointment.
Best for: Hangover busting
This 16th-century coaching inn near Canterbury has a Michelin star so expect the Sunday roast to be ‘just so’: refined enough to impress the guide’s inspectors, comforting enough to please the punters. The confit poussin (£26), saddle and breast of Blackface lamb (£28) and confit swede and mushroom pithivier (£24) served on Sundays only, fit the brief perfectly. The roasties are great but the hasselback potatoes with beef fat hollandaise are something else.
Best for: Michelin-star dining
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This country house hotel near the north Norfolk coast is a long-established bastion of haute cuisine, recognised with a Michelin star. Chef Galton Blackiston stays true to his preferred tasting menu format with a seven-course menu served every day but Saturday and Sunday, when he loosens his collar to offer a four-course mini tasting menu. Sunday’s regularly changing menu (£70) promises “Sunday roast elements” like Yorkshire beef and roast potatoes to follow the pea velouté and Lowestoft sea bass with asparagus and white wine.
Best for: A grown-up family lunch
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Chef Margot Henderson of London’s Rochelle Canteen, rings the changes at this picturesque village pub with a monthly-changing menu that reminds us there’s more to modern British than meat and two veg. Expect the likes of megrim sole with dulse butter, pumpkin caponata with mozzarella, and fried green tomatoes with caper mayonnaise – or roast Hereford rump or pork loin if Sunday isn’t Sunday without a roast. Seasonal puds include blackberry crumble sundae, and apple pie with muscovado ice cream.
Best for: Heavenly puddings
A Sunday stroll around leafy Clifton Village should always end up over a glass of red at The Clifton Arms. This stylish local, tastefully appointed with candlelit tables and green-painted wainscoting, is known for nose-to-tail eating in the “St John” style. Start with ox heart skewers or oysters with a good dash of Tabasco, ahead of, say, stuffed Gothelney pork belly and apple sauce (£24) or Torgelly Farm lamb and mint sauce (£28). Lose the afternoon over freshly baked madeleines or British cheese.
Best for: Lazy afternoons
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What the Brits don’t know about massive plates of meat and stodge, they could learn from the Germans. Alberts Schloss in Birmingham styles itself as a contemporary Alpine “bier palace” complete with tanks of beer, live music, and pretzels galore. Its Sunday Service (£24 for two courses), is one for hearty eaters, with options including pork knuckle, baked truffle mash with Alpine cheese and “schweins in blankets” as well as classic roast beef and chicken. Dessert is apple strudel, natürlich. Branches in Manchester, Liverpool and London too.
Best for: Big groups
If you belong to a warring family that can’t even settle on a Sunday lunch venue, this Indian gastropub in the village of Milford might just be for you. It runs a full menu involving everything from Keralan king prawns to seekh kebabs and butter chicken, but with the addition of an old-fashioned British roast on Sundays. So you can have the topside of beef, (£16.50), while everyone else has curry. Or vice versa.
Best for: Spice lovers 
David and Sarah Webster took on this village pub, shuttered in the pandemic, in 2023. It’s now the essence of “a modern English inn” with real fires, near 200 wines in the cellar, and a painstakingly sourced, emphatically seasonal menu. There’s always roast beef and a roast to share on Sundays, with all other options scrawled on the blackboard daily. Children can opt for small portions of the grown-ups’ food or their choice from a dedicated menu that includes a mini roast on Sundays.
Best for: Kids
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If you think you have the measures of this cocktail bar and restaurant with its natural wines, small plates, and distressed walls, then you need to go on a Sunday, when it serves a “no fuss, no gimmicks” Sunday roast that’s unapologetically unfashionable. Take your pick between 32-day aged sirloin (£20), porchetta (£18), roast chicken (£18) and a mushroom wellington (£16) all with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, parsnips, red cabbage, and carrot and swede mash worthy of a northern granny.
Best for: Cool urban vibes
From her kitchen at the Black Bull in Sedbergh, with the Lake District to the west, the Yorkshire Dales to the east, chef Nina Matsunaga has her pick of the UK’s finest produce. Her menus showcase the likes of British White beef, Herdwick lamb, and Lindisfarne oysters, with nods to Matsunaga’s German Japanese upbringing. Her Sunday menu, £21.50 to £37.50, skews more traditional, but sides of bean cassoulet and harissa and root vegetable gratin with black garlic pack a real punch.
Best for: Brilliant side orders
Cumbrian chef Kevin Tickle was head forager at L’Enclume so always finds a way to work a few unusual ingredients like dulse and scurvy grass into his Sunday menu (£39.50) at Heft near Grange-over-Sands. While evenings are given over to ambitious ten-course tasting menus, Tickle’s Sunday Service isn’t so far off what you’d find in a Lakeland inn, only with Roscoff onions and ramson béarnaise with the dry-aged beef rib, and sauerkraut and alliums with the Herdwick hogget. The Scandi-style interiors are minimalist but hygge.
Best for: Foraged ingredients
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Secure in its Gallic identity, this neighbourhood bistro softens its French accent juste un peu on Sundays. The full à la carte menu is available (including duck rillettes and baba au rhum) but Yorkshire-born chef Sandy Jarvis can’t not lay on a roast too. Roast squash wellington (£20), lamb shoulder (£23), and côte de boeuf for two (£90), all come with outsize Yorkies and heaps of roast spuds. Drink with a nice Loire red from co-owner Clément Cousin’s family vineyard.
Best for: Francophiles
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After a weekend spent enjoying Skye’s glorious, untouched scenery, it’s time to cosy up indoors over a long lunch and a dram of whisky at this loch-side hotel. Every chef dreams of the produce Jordan Webb has on his doorstep, from scallops and mussels to venison and lamb. His Sunday lunch (£44 for three courses) is epic; with choices including venison haunch and truffled mushroom and goat’s cheese wellington and more extras than you can decently fit on a plate.
Best for: A weekend getaway
Gleneagles Townhouse, an offshoot of Scotland’s most famous hotel, opened in the former Bank of Scotland HQ in Edinburgh in 2022. Its all-day restaurant The Spence occupies the old glass-domed banking hall, resplendent now with granite columns, marble tables, and scalloped banquettes as far as the eye can see. It’s a chic place to see and be seen on Sundays with friends, a bottle of nebbiolo, and big plates of rare roast Scottish sirloin (£36) or Ayrshire pork loin (£24) with Yorkshire puddings, cauliflower cheese and roast potatoes.
Best for: The scene
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Roaring fires, stone floors, low beams, and sofas you could get lost in set the scene at this quintessential Welsh country pub between the Black Mountains and the Brecon Beacons. Chef Gwenann Davies’ Sunday lunch menu (£42 for three courses) has traditional roasts alongside modern, international dishes such as maple-glazed crown prince with burrata and salsa verde or imam bayildi with artichoke crisps and curry oil. Whatever you do, don’t miss the caramelised bara brith with Welsh cake ice cream.
Best for: Vegetarians
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This vibey bistro in the small coastal town of Holywood launched in 2016 and is now an established local favourite. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand (for high quality food at reasonable prices) and shakes up its Sunday menu just enough to keep its regulars coming back. For an alternative to roast beef, try pork belly with sauce charcutière or chicken breast and jus gras. Save space for the treacle tart or steamed pudding with rhubarb and custard.
Best for: A weekend date
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