Sunday Roast--Oxford

Depends really what you are looking for. Not far away from that hotel is The Jericho Tavern which offers the three main roasts.

More high end (certainly in terms of prices!) is The Magdalen Arms. Definitely reserve here.

Hello from Wisconsin,
The Sunday Roast. Here in Wisconsin, we have the Friday night fish fry.

When you arrive in town, find the recommended place and get a reservation. Seems odd to have to do that but Sunday Roast is a big thing. Most will offer beef and pork. Or roll the dice and get there when the place opens and assure them that you will eat fast and be gone.

wayne iNWI

Marco, I don't really know what I'm looking for, lol. Have never gotten to eat this before. Just recently found out from my daughter and son in law that it is a Thing in the UK. Thank you!

I wouldn’t say it’s a big thing here. I haven’t had a Sunday roast lunch out in the past decade or more. Many pubs and restaurants offer mediocre roasts. It’s the kind of meal that’s best cooked at home.

I took your title and googled it, or at least close: Sunday Roast in Oxford. I got what I thought were some pretty good looking hits:

Oxford's Best Sunday Roasts
Top 5 Sunday Roasts in Oxford
Top 10 Best Sunday Roast in Oxford.

I would maybe give those a look.

I wouldn’t say it’s a big thing here. I haven’t had a Sunday roast lunch out in the past decade or more. Many pubs and restaurants offer mediocre roasts. It’s the kind of meal that’s best cooked at home.

I would say that it's a big thing here in respect that it's a traditional Sunday lunch. I'm in agreement with Jennifer in that it's a dish best cooked at home. I have only eaten two good roasts from a pub/restaurant. One was for a group meal and the menu was set allowing the chefs to get the timings right and serve everything at the right time (this is the difficult part for getting a roast dinner right). Roast potatoes, second only to the meat (others might argue for the Yorkshire pudding even though it's traditionally only served with beef), need to be served straight from the oven and considering they take an hour to roast (after a bit of parboiling) it's difficult to maintain a flow of perfect roast potatoes over a period of several hours. The other good roast I've had is in a pub near me, the potatoes weren't perfect but the rest was done very well which allowed me to forgive them slightly for the potatoes. Neither has a patch on a good home cooked roast.

You will find roasts being offered in most pubs on Sunday's which is actually quite frustrating as this is typically the only time that we, as a family, are free of all commitments, clubs, hobbies etc and can go out for lunch only to find that the lunch menu has been pared back significantly in order to concentrate on roasts.

The rise in popularity of Sunday roasts in pubs etc is due, I suspect, to the lack of people knowing how to cook one. The rise in the variety of pre-made meals in the supermarkets is testament to more and more people eschewing cooking from scratch for whatever reasons. I recently overheard a conversation in a supermarket between two young mums in their mid 20's where one confessed to never having roasted a chicken and had no idea how to. Therefore, view the 'thing' about a pub Sunday Roast as something more representative of a shift in lifestyle choices rather than an iconic culinary tradition that has to be experienced, I would hate to think that such poor offerings would only serve to further damage our undeserved reputation for having bad food.