Twelve Sunday roasts, ranked by someone who ate all of them
Six weekends, twelve pubs and one very patient dentist. Where to go for the best roast in and around Brantwick, and where the gravy let us down.
Ruby Ainsworth
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8 min read
The fire at the Plough, lit from the first cold Sunday in September.
A roast is a simple thing to get right and a very easy thing to get wrong. Over six weekends I ate at twelve pubs within four miles of the Town Hall, paid for every plate and judged them on the same five things: meat, potatoes, gravy, vegetables and whether anyone checked the Yorkshire pudding before it left the kitchen.
The winner: the Plough, Mill Lane
Slow-roast pork shoulder with crackling that actually cracked, potatoes roasted in dripping and a gravy you could stand a spoon in. £17.50, and the fire was lit. Book ahead: they turn people away by one o’clock.
Close behind
The Fleece on Bridge Street does the best beef in town, pink in the middle and carved to order, at £19. The Wheatsheaf in Lower Ashby does a nut roast that two meat-eaters at my table tried and then quietly finished.
Room for improvement
We won’t name the two places where the potatoes came out of a freezer bag. They know who they are, and both have since told us they’re changing supplier.
About the writer
Ruby Ainsworth
Food and drink
Eats her way round Brantwick so you don’t have to guess. Pays for every meal she writes about and never tells the kitchen she’s coming.
The Friday email