The search for Hong Kong’s best Sunday roasts: Yorkshire puds, potatoes and all the trimmings
There may not be as many places in Hong Kong serving the traditional British blowout, but we selflessly visited a number of restaurants to test their various versions
There are few weekly meals as hearty as a Sunday roast – a plate bulging with slabs of succulent meat, a selection of vegetables and – the crowning glory – a Yorkshire pudding, all bathed in a rich brown gravy.
The secret to a good pudding is having the fat smoking hot before the batter is poured and placed in the oven, making it rise. “A Yorkshire pudding isn’t a Yorkshire pudding if it is less than four inches tall,” Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry says of the golden concoction made from a batter of eggs, flour and milk that often baffles those who didn’t grow up with them.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, 20 years after Hong Kong’s return to China, it’s not so easy to find a traditional British Sunday roast as it once was. A good number of bars and restaurants that tout their great British credentials serve up a fine all-day English breakfast, but fewer offer the weekend special.
Neither Queen Victoria nor Churchills in Wan Chai serve weekend roasts, and nor does British chef Tom Aitken at The Pawn. Butchers Club’s Steak Frites restaurant, which boasted a gourmet version, has closed down. Gordon Ramsay’s London House recently took the dish off its menu. We did find a few, though.
