Part the first
In which a plan is conceived
“Hashtag Sunday roast club?”
“You mean, go out, have a roast dinner in a restaurant somewhere, come up with a convoluted scoring system, and write a short essay of at best minimal relevance to the subject at hand while bringing up a bunch of personal hobby horses and, in extremis, mention whether the meat was OK?”
“Hashtag Sunday roast club!”
“Sold. Let’s book @TheLordClifden.”
Part the second
In which a convoluted scoring system is worked out and, in extremis, comments on whether the meat was OK are to be found
You can’t book the Lord Clifden Sunday lunchtimes, it turns out. Just drop by, they said. It’ll probably be OK. And it was. Minor kerfuffle around them having a front door with a sign saying “Open” and yet being locked put aside for a moment, the Lord Clifden is pretty famous around the Jewellery Quarter and the rest of the city for (a) having good food (b) and good beer (c) and good everything else, which is encouraging. Also, you get to ride the tram to get there, which probably requires a tram selfie, yes it does.
Delightful welcome, too; the place is busy but not too busy at half one on a Sunday, which means that it avoids the whole empty restaurant thing but you can still get a seat, and interesting mango-flavoured beer. They’re super fast, too: straight up to the bar, glass of this, pint of that, and a choice between half a roast chicken, braised Welsh lamb shoulder, roast topside of beef, or slow-cooked pork belly for the Sunday roast section, all with season(al) vegetables, Yorkshire pudding, mash(ed) potato, crispy roasters, and homemade red wine and rosemary gravy. (More on the gravy shortly.) Thirteen quid, which is pretty lucky in our collective opinion, especially when there’s a picture of a zombie Marilyn Monroe behind the bar. (Ah, Hallowe’en, how tacky and yet delightful thou art.)
It arrived alarmingly quickly too, unless we were just lost in conversation, and importantly hadn’t got that way by being microwaved, which means that the LC are confident enough that they’ll have people in that they cook the meals in the expectation thereof. This speaks well of the place in itself. The food lives up to it, too: excellently-done lamb which fell apart, great beef, lots of vegetables (no “and two veg” here). Sauces brought to the table without asking, and decent sauces, too: horseradish for the beef, mustard, and so on; everything you’d need, including decent ground peppercorns and not black dust in a pot with a P on the top that was last filled in 1988. Dinner’s in a bowl, mind you, for which you get a Suspicious Look. Bowls are not for roasts. But the food, bowl aside, was good stuff; well-cooked, tasty, well-varied, provided quickly, hot, not pricey. There was football on the telly, which was a bit loud, the gravy was a little bit thin, and underneath the meat there was Hidden Mash (is this a thing now? This should not, we feel, be a thing) but these are the minorest of minor cavils at best.
The scoring system is somewhat open to challenge as this goes on (it’s hard to judge the first place, especially when one hasn’t eaten a roast dinner not made by one’s mother for about five years), but for now, that’s 23 zombie Marilyn Monroe heads out of a total of 25 zombie Marilyn Monroe heads for @theLordClifden. Worth a visit.
Part the third
#sundayroastclub scores, @theLordClifden, October 2019
Ambience
★★★★☆
Value for money
★★★★★
Taste
★★★★☆
Service
★★★★★
Variety
★★★★★
23/25
Sunday Roast Club 