Bar food served daily 10am—10pm; full dinner menu Wed—Sat 6pm—10pm
The Style & Crowd:
With the Truscott Arms’ Sunday roast being feted as the best roast in the country, my friends and I arrived with high expectations—myself especially. If I were on death row, a roast would feature heavily in my last meal.
The Food:
The roast menu consisted of 35-day aged beef rump, rare breed pulled pork and loin, and smoked lamb shoulder. Two things to mention here: first, there is no chicken roast, at which I was slightly aghast (I don’t eat red meat) and second, ideally get there before 3pm, as they had run out of the beef when we ordered around that time.
I ordered the pan-fried hake with confit potatoes and mussel sauce, which was incredibly good. So good that I took photos and even forgot that I wasn’t eating a chicken roast (although I tucked into my friends’ Yorkshire and garlic green beans for good measure).
Large portions of the different roast ingredients arrived in the middle for all to share: oversized Yorkshires, crispy potatoes, and lots and lots of meat. One of my friends—a Kiwi—exclaimed that the meat was the best lamb that he hadn’t slept with. I took it to be a compliment of the highest order about the quality of the meat—those Kiwis do know their sheep!
The starters were excellent. I recommend ordering most of them and sharing between you so you get to experience as much as possible. I especially recommend the mackerel volute.
But the puddings… hmm. What I can say is that the portion size is good, but truthfully that’s not what you are coming here for. They almost seem like an afterthought and don’t compare at all with the complexity of flavours of the starters or main. We ordered two variations on a cream concoction with berries and strawberries and were quite perplexed by it—not a trifle but not quite a cheesecake either. It was good but not amazing, though we were also so full after the extravaganza that was the first two courses that whatever was put in front of us afterwards wasn’t likely to get eaten.
The Drinks:
The wine list was solid and exciting and we indulged in a couple of bottles of Paul Hobbs Chardonnay. I think we were there five hours in total, and a good time was had by all.
And this is the thing about the Truscott – it was busy enough for us to laugh quite raucously without disrupting other diners thanks to its large capacity, while at the same time feels intimate despite that capacity. Was it the best roast dinner I’ve had in the UK? No, because I had to have fish due to the lack of chicken roast option. But was it one of the best roast dinners my friends had had? They said wholeheartedly: yes.
