GRILL usually conjures up thoughts of barbecues or a griddle on an open range, dude food and big, juicy steaks. And of course The Grill On The Alley is renowned for its premium cuts of steak and award-winning burgers – but now you can also add a proper Sunday roast to your must-eats from the new menu.
Pick from roasted beef, pork with crackling or half a chicken (£12.95 each), or share a platter of two meats between you (£27). With the promise of great roast potatoes, “your weekly allowance of veg” and Yorkshire pudding, we skip a starter and go straight for roast beef and roast chicken. The amount is perfect and the presentation – including classic white plates, proper cutlery and cotton napkins – makes for a sophisticated Sunday lunch.
Tasty, almost sweet gravy comes in a jug, so you can add as much or as little as takes your fancy. Both the beef – pink, as requested, and melt in the mouth – and the chicken have a peppery garnish of watercress for extra colour and depth, and sauces are brought on demand (watch out for the horseradish – it’s hot!). A delicious sage-infused stuffing with finely chopped onion accompanies the chicken, and both roasts are served with separate copper-bottomed oven-to-table dishes of vegetables. The buttery carrot and swede mash has a lovely thyme flavour, and the cabbage, finely shredded and not a stranger to butter itself, makes a swift disappearance. Yes, even having to eat your greens is good!
Washed down with a glass or two of Rioja and Pinot Grigio, we’re glad of a short break – watching joints from the Butcher’s Block being cut at other tables, and soaking up the old Blues soundtrack and then the live pianist banging out some boogie-woogie tunes and jazz standards on the restaurant’s upright.
The lemon and lime posset is a light but sublimely creamy choice to round off our roasts, served with lovely chewy brandy snaps, and pretty as a picture in a tall glass with a fresh mint flourish.
A PROPER SUNDAY ROAST - £12.95 PER PERSON
A fantastic joint of meat, great roast potatoes, proper gravy (like Granny makes), your weekly allowance of veg, eyeing up the last spud, using every dish, pan and pot in the kitchen and then pretending to be asleep afterwards to avoid the washing up.
ROASTED BEEF
What Sunday is all about! Cooked either medium or well done, served with all the trimmings*
ROASTED PORK
Served with all the trimmings*... and crackling, of course!
ROASTED HALF-CHICKEN
Yes you heard us right, half a chicken, on the bone! Served with all the trimmings*
* THE TRIMMINGS: Loads of real roast potatoes tonnes of proper gravy carrot and swede mash buttered shredded cabbage and before you have to ask... Yorkshire puddings with all roasts!
