roast, Southwark, London

I’d been here three times before our visit last Tuesday. I’d loved it the other times so was looking forward to dinner quite a lot.

Unfortunately nothing on the menu jumped out at me. Eventually I chose smoked mackerel with various accompaniments to start and mixed grill for main course.

The mackerel was good and the stuff which went with it – particularly the grapes – went well with the oily fish. However, there was only one small bit of fish. A mackerel starter was one of the things I particularly remembered enjoying from a previous visit and there were two fillets then, so I was a little disappointed.

I’ve never ordered a mixed grill before and wasn’t sure about just having meat with no vegetables or sauce. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The meat was all high quality and well cooked, the liver and bacon steak particularly stood out but everything was good.

Dessert was apple crumble with custard. I’m a crumble man and this gets 7.5/10 in my crumble charts, so good but not exceptional.

Overall a four star rating but if I’d reviewed based on my previous memories rather than on last Tuesday’s dinner it would be five.

I’m not really sure why I’m writing this review because I had almost exactly the same experience as everyone else who has left a review here!

The restaurant is in an excellent location on Borough market and looks beautiful inside. Not over done just classy looking. The singer was very good and when you walk into a restaurant or a hotel with a singer and a grand piano , you know you’re in an expensive place.

I went with the wife and 2 friends and we all had the beef which was outstanding. My usual complaint with ‘roast dinners out’ is that you never get enough vegetables. I can’t complain about that here – not an excessive amount but just right.

The starter I had was celeraic soup and blue stilton and it was lovely. It’s not easy to get any flavour out of celeraic!

We all had desserts which were very good and 2 bottles of wine at £34 each which was a little steep for English Pinot Noir – in fact the cheapest bottle you’ll get in Roast is around £24.

The service was pretty good, maybe a little fussy. It sounds silly but I think you can have too many waiters, who then fuss around you trying to look busy. But they were friendly.

The bill came to £236 with a £27 service charge. So, there is no doubt that Roast is not a cheap place to go for sunday lunch. But this is a classic case of ‘you get what you pay for’. If you’re looking to impress on a Sunday afternoon, it’s a great place to go and afterwards you can take a nice stroll down the Southbank to walk it off.

Roast is the Rolls Royce of Sunday roasts.

I think we managed to massively confuse the staff at Roast yesterday, and to give them their dues, they didn't flinch a bit when five sweaty and messy girls turned up for drinks. See, we'd just done a 5k run for charity and because I chose the run in the City, everywhere was shut when we finished which meant no drinks for us. I always forget what a wasteland that area turns into on a Sunday.

Which meant the only place open nearby (it was only just 12). Roast was it. We only wanted drinks, and they perched us at the bar with our soggy running stuff and little medals. Then we drank our way through the cocktail menu.

Every single cocktail I tried was excellent. The star of the afternoon was a strawberry bellini thing which had a heck of a lot of vodka in it. Their cocktails are inventive and the bar staff a really friendly.

The downside? It's VERY expensive. Cocktails are around the £10-11 mark, and I know it's fancy, but my friend got 15p change after buying a beer and a COKE. There needs to be something very special about a beer that costs six quid, (and the staff need to learn how to pour something that's been bottle conditioned).

But, then I remember how yummy the cocktails were, and how friendly they were given that we looked a bedraggled mess, so it's four stars from me even though we didn't have anything to eat. I can't afford to come here often, and I think the bar feels more like a waiting area for the restaurant, but a very fun time was had by all.

Roast. Roast and more Roast. They've sure got the name right. If there was one word I would use to describe the type of cuisine on offer it would be 'Roast'. It was a friend's birthday last night and for a (yet another) special treat, we went to the restaurant above Borough Market in London Bridge, famous for its (you guessed it) roast meats and rich accompaniments. This is not one to visit if you are trying to eat healthily or on a budget. It's indulgence in all sorts of ways.

The restaurant is beautiful; it was stylishly lit and with a stunning semi-circular window (the retained portico of an old flower market); there was an open kitchen where you could see the kitchen staff plating up salads and sauces (my friend did ask if one of them was the headchef to which we all replied, no dear, he/she will be doing much more important things in the back); a vault for expensive wine and a swish shiny bar cutting off the casual area with a live piano from the bistro style restaurant.

The meat was delicious, especially the steak, which unsurprisingly enough was the most expensive thing on the menu. It was cooked medium and presented stylishly on a wooden board with a novelty miniature pan of peppercorn sauce. I didn't order it so cannot give a full account. All I was allowed was a tiny slither. Look at the photo to the left though and you can make up your own mind. It looked pretty damn good to me. Instead I ordered the Beef Wellington and it was great, but didn't leave me speechless. The meat was pink and soft and the sauce was rich and winey, but the pastry wasn't crispy enough and the mushroom pate was a little overpowering. It was also meant to come with braised red cabbage which was another reason why I ordered it, but the restaurant had run out, very unimpressive considering the £28 price tag. I was offered root mash as an alternative which I accepted a bit grumpily only to find that the sidedish was left off our order when the rest of the food was bought out. The other side dishes were pleasing, especially the sprouts with bacon and stuffing, a true taste of Christmas. The wine was delicious, but it was £17 and all we got was a 500ml carafe. I would happily have paid that for a full bottle, but two-thirds? A bit much.

The waitress was friendly and did some good selling. She uptalked all of the specials and tried her very hardest to get us to buy doubles of everything. On both cases she didn't persuade us: it £9 per G&T. One was more than enough. Overall the service was a little slow. Our table was constantly being buzzed around by waiters, waitresses and bar men but for all the show of being busy, not a lot of waitering happened. For this sort of money I expected a quicker and more responsive service. Though they recovered some points when we told them it was one of our parties birthdays and a plate of ice cream with a candle, a homemade brandy snap and 'happy birthday Kate' written in chocolate sauce turned up.

Now to the entertainment. In the bar area was a singer with accompanying pianist. She played some great, cheesey tunes (a lot of Aleisha Keys, Mariah Carey) and had a fantastic voice but she was a little overwhelming. Everyone had a little giggle when she started the first chorus of Empire State of Mind and at 'New York' (not Newport..), a third of the restaurant (mostly those under 30) started to sing along. But the over-loud volume did get in the way of us having a deep and meaningful over dinner.

Overall, I had an ace experience and I went home very full and fairly satisfied. My final issue with Roast is that whilst stuffing myself with great produce I easily forgot where I was. I was sitting and eating above one of the most iconic food markets in the country. Why wasn't I being reminded of it? It wasn't mentioned in any of the menus, there were no pictures on the wall, it was a real undersell of the resources right on their doorstep. If it was my restaurant, I would have been buying the beef from the beef stall in the market, the wine from the wine stall in the market, the..you, get the picture. Maybe they did? They just didn't bother to let the patrons know.

I've been to Roast a couple of times for breakfast now and will be definitely be going back again sometime soon. Their 'Full Borough' breakfast is amazing - excellent quality sausages and streaky bacon, the best black pudding in the world, crispy fried bread, eggs poached to perfection with lovely runny yokes....I'm starting to drool just thinking about it. At £15 it's a tad more expensive than what you'd usually expect to pay for a fry up but the quality ingredients they use definitely make it worth it. Last time I went we ate before 9am and took advantage of the buy one breakfast get one free offer which made it fantastic value for money. The staff are attentive without being intrusive and I've never felt rushed to leave once I've finished eating. Views of the market below and the dome of St Pauls make it a lovely way to enjoy a leisurely Saturday morning breakfast.

I had a pleasant meal at Roast eating from their set menu, or Market menu. It was £28 for 3 courses and there were three or four choices on each one with a veggie option available. To have the Market menu on a Saturday evening we had to arrive between 6 and 6.30.

When we arrived we were informed that we would need to have finished by 8.45 in order to make the table available for the next seating. We were happy with that so it was little surprising that the waiting staff took 45 minutes to take our order and that they got a little surly when we asked if they were going to take it. Bearing in mind that the restaurant was only about half full at this point.

The meal was generally very nice. Little rabbit burgers in toast were tasty and juicy with a tangy, sweet and sticky apple sauce. Then the slow roast belly of pork was succulent and delicious though it's crackling was more chewy than crisp which seems a crying shame. It came with a generous serving of buttery creamy mash so there was no need to order extra side dishes which we had already done - crunchy goose fat roast potatoes which were perfectly cooked though slightly lacking in seasoning. Finally I had the cheese for dessert which was some cheddar and biscuits. It wasn't the most remarkable cheddar I've ever eaten but it was fine. The members of my party that had the raspberry cheesecake and the rhubarb fool though were very pleased.

All in all, I would say Roast provides quite nice (not amazing) food in a swanky setting for a fairly reasonable price, so long as you stick to their Market menu. Beyond that, and when you look to the wine list, it gets very expensive very quickly...but maybe it gets amazing too! The main area for improvement based on my experience is their serving - not leaving people too long and always being friendly.

I had a great experience at Roast.

The waiter was very knowledgable (if a bit sarcastic, and reluctant to take our wine order!), and the coat staff were very quick and helpful too.

I had a corned beef and pickled onion hash to start, which was absolutely lovely, followed by a large and beautifully cooked steak (I couldn't finish it, but I really, really, really wanted to). I had a Chocolate Banoffee Pudding as dessert - heaven in a pot.

It's pricey but worth it. Lovely food, nice surroundings, and quick service. I would wholeheartedly recommend it - perhaps more so if someone else is paying!

My $0.02

I'd heard a lot of good things about Roast and it was always one of those places I wanted to try out, so yesterday I took one of my mates for dinner.

The place has a great atmosphere and a relaxed vibe about it but frankly I have to say that I expected more.

Service

- the coat staff were quite incompetent, with three of them leaving me waiting (and I was the only one there!) for over three minutes. It might not sound like a long time, but it is when you're being ignored and in a restaurant!

- I don't think I've ever had a less enthusiastic waiter. No smile, no hello, no goodbye. When questioned "what's the special?", the reply was a one word "mussels". No price, no description, just one word.

Food - the food was good, but not £20 a dish good. It was gastropub, £12 - 15 good. For the premium you pay I'd expect better. The belly pork was tasty but in parts very dry. The pheasant portion was rather small.

All in all, I'd probably go again on a special offer / TopTable, but not full price. There are plenty of cheaper and better places.

As other reviewers have stated, Roast does exactly what it says on the tin, but at a price.

Roasts and other classic English dishes, well made with quality ingredients which wouldn't be out of place in the stalls of the Borough Market below.

My dining companion and I went for the three course £26 "Market menu", which during our visit offered a selection of starters (such as tomato soup or potted salt beef), mains of duck, trout, pork and a vegetable tart, and a desert selction including potted fig and an apple pie with custard. Everything we sampled was well presented and fantastic tasting.

The restaurant itself was quite full (although it was a Saturday night), but we were lucky enough to be given a window table, providing views overlooking the borough market and the other restaurants below.

My only criticism of Roast would be the expensive wine list, a minimum of £20 for a 500ml caraffe of wine, moving up to £30 minimum for a bottle is pricey. Nevertheless, the South African 2008 Quando Sauvignon Blanc was very nice, and not a wine you usually see on menus.

With a meal for 2 with wine coming to £100, it's not your typical pub roast, but recommended if you want to treat yourself.

Roast is one of those places everyone seems to have been to and have an opinion on and generally the consensus is that it's pricey but you'll come away satisfied and stuffed. Which is pretty much the view I took away from a long and lazy Sunday lunch over a highly quaffable red.

Despite, essentially, being located by a decaying train bridge, Roast makes the most of its space and is light and airy, feeling both open and intimate at the same time - never an easy trick to pull off.

The Sunday lunch option was a three course set menu for £20 (or two for £26) with a decent variety and vegetarian options as well.

The starts were nice without ever hitting spectacular notes, although the trout was brilliantly fresh. Potted pickled herring was tasty, although I could have happily munched on just the soda bread and super-creamy butter.

But the proof, for a place like Roast, is in the mains and they didn't disappoint. Half a chicken was beautifully tender while roast beef was medium rare and absolutely perfect. I'd have liked some wholegrain mustard to go with it as opposed to Coleman's, but that's a minor gripe.

The apple and rhubarb crumble to finish was sublime, although the bakewell didn't quite live up to its name.

Throw in an impressive wine list and friendly and efficient service and Roast definitely justifies the price.

There were lots of families when we visit on Sunday lunch and this place is suitable for all sorts if you want a blow out. The food is delicious yet won't scare off non-foodies. Dates, parent birthdays or a celebration - Roast has them all cooked.

Divine breakfast - recommend early Saturday morning - best if seated before 9:00. Roast have been giving discounts for early bookings. Eggs Benedict is a must, veggie breakfast very nice as well. Atmosphere is fabulous with not-to-be-missed views overlooking Borough Market. Very busy later mornings with families from suburbs.

I visited Roast for lunch a few days before Xmas so the atmosphere at Borough Market was buzzing. Great seat looking down across the Market. The menu here is great, as long as you are a meat lover and not afraid of a few terms such as "bone marrow"! I had scotch egg for starter with Picalilly, may sound a bit dull but it was delicious. For main I opted for the famous pork belly with mash and apple sauce. The piece of pork was enormous but delicious, the crackling was perfectly crisp and the meat tender. Perfect. I was too full for dessert which was dissapointing as they have a great cheese menu, sourced from Neils Yard but I did manage a glass of port, it was Xmas afterall. Great, friendly service, great atmosphere and great food. A bit pricey so not a restaurant for regular dining but great for a treat!

I have been here once for breakfast and really enjoyed it. It the usual suspects on the menu but don't expect the greasy spoon mountain of food for £3 this is more of a 'posh' breakfast. I went for the works which I think is called 'the full roast' its was yummy, good quality sausages and bacon and eggs cooked how you like them. The atmosphere was friendly and relaxed and they were in no rush to get rid of us even though we had been there over two hours!
I think breakfast was around £8 and that did not include the drinks (tea, juice etc) so its more of a treat than a regular haunt. I have been back a few times for lunch, looked at the menu and walked away...fish and chips is around £20, I mean it would have to be some seriously out of this world fish and chips for that price...and maybe it is? I have never felt rich enough to try, expecially when the fish place in the market does lovely fish and chips for less than half that on a Friday....Maybe I will get a win on the lottery and I will go eat their lunch and let you know :-)
If you want a nice brekkie though, def try this place

Have visited Roast twice now, once for breakfast and once for lunch.

No booking for breakfast so we were lucky to get a table as it was heaving on Saturday morning. We took the risk and were lucky.

Generally, I was underwhelmed by the menu and the food. It was standard breakfast food with nothing really exciting outside of the norm. We both ordered dishes with poached eggs. Both came out hard rather than with a runny yolk. Had to send them back.

However, lunch was a different society and I think this is where I would recommend it. I went for the fish and chips which I think is a Friday lunch regular. Wow. The mushy peas were the best I have ever had.

Both meals were not cheap, but their quality high.

Oh, lastly, coffee was terrible, but we are both coffee snobs.

Overall, go, enjoy breakfast but expect nothing out of the ordinary. Lunch, I think this is great mid-week if you are in the area or having a Friday off and tour the markets in the morning before a long lunch at Roast.

Although I have only tasted the food from the little market stall downstairs those have always been delicious and I have only heard good things about Roast. Hope to review it more in full soon, but for all those people who can’t get reservations, just pop down to the stall on any market day and enjoy the preview!

For various reasons, I’ve probably been to Roast more than any other London restaurant now. And it’s never a hardship.

At breakfast, I’d suggest the Haggis. The Full Roast is excellent but even someone of my, ahem, generous girth struggles. Lovely toast too.

Otherwise, the pork belly is always a fine choice and the daily special has never let me down - a recent visit delivered the single best piece of beef I’ve ever eaten - but if you can get organised order the day before and have the rib. The burger - Saturday brunch and on the bar menu - is also dazzling. I’ve not tried the Hawksmoor version yet but it’s got to go some to knock this burger off the “best in London” perch.

Happily this isn’t a place to rest on its laurels. They’ve introduced a new “own blend” wine from Chapel Down which is not just the best English wine I’ve ever had, it’s one I’m convinced will throw even vociferous Aussies in a blind tasting. The new “own roast” of coffee is also up there with Monmouth in terms of being Borough Market’s best bet. Love it.

Excellent space overlooking Borough Market; a friend and I were tippin around lookin for somewhere to eat and a local guy we bumped into recommended it…if you not lookin for full silver service just amble up and look at the bar menu; mainly little bits’n pieces that added together make for some real tastiness. Bar staff are discrete and give good service. Nice spot altogether, wouldn’t mind comin back for a proper go, may have to save the pennies first!

Yes you have to look out for the lift entrance, we almost walked round the block before we saw the right in front of us sign. Very light inside and pleasant. Not inexpensive, but you do get a big plateful of quality food. You would have to be very hungry to do 3 courses. Good staff. Useful if you are in the area rather than a special visit, but other reviewers rate the breakfast highly so that might alter my opinion if I get to eat one there. And a goodly number of wines on the list, though most above £32 from what I saw. And not suffering from recession judging by the number of people there on a Monday lunch!

Have been to this place for both breakfast and dinner. It is extrordinary food. It is so fresh and vibrant. There is no question that the quality of the produce (being above borough market, this is to be expected! The service and restaurant are very highly rated to, but it isn’t a stuffy restaurant, it is buzy and enjoyable when ever you fancy visiting it. The breakfast is the best i’ve ever had.

Having tried their brunch here a few months ago, I was eager to see how they fared on their namesake. With every choice of roast possible, I opted for the roast beef after debating it over with the pork. I did cheekily ask the waiter if I could have a tiny slice of pork with my beef to settle both cravings and to my surprise he delivered. The beef was lovely but perhaps a little too much sinew for my liking and the pork was just perfect and I had meal envy right there on my own plate. Opting for the two courses for 26 quid, (yes, it’s a fancy roast place) we all chose a main meal and a dessert. After spotting a Knickerbocker Glory that a kid was having on an opposite table, a few of us decided that we must have that for dessert and while not appearing on our menus, the waiter handed over the “Young Diner’s” menu where Knickerbocker Glory featured. Ahh, there is no shame ordering from a children’s menu when ordering in numbers, is there? It was mighty tasty and a fine afternoon.