The classic Sunday lunch is back on the menu

THE classic Sunday lunch is back on the menu.

Paddo Inn's Gravy Day Sunday roast beef with Yorkshire pudding.

READERS of a certain vintage will remember an old commercial where Naomi Watts turns down dinner with Tom Cruise because her mum’s making a lamb roast that night. With the benefit of hindsight, even Nicole Kidman would say she made the right call.

An old-fashioned roast dinner has a nostalgic pull on our hearts and tastebuds, which is why chefs are putting the traditional Sunday roast back on the menu.

Chef Nelly Robinson is serving a roast with all the trimmings at his fine diner Nel (75 Wentworth Ave, Sydney).

The proteins change regularly — from beef short rib on the bone to lamb shoulder to organic corn fed chicken — but it comes with the sides you expect, including gravy, duck fat potatoes, cauliflower cheese plus a dessert of sticky day pudding with clotted cream for $78.

“I was in kitchen with my missus cooking a roast chicken at home and said ‘I miss this’,” says the UK-born chef.

“A Sunday roast brings families together. You do the jobs on a Saturday and get together to eat and drink with the family on a Sunday.”

Even though he’s been in Australia for eight years, the Lancastrian believes you need to serve roasts with Yorkshire puddings.

“It’s a plush pancake batter — eggs, flour, milk and nutmeg — you use it to mop up the gravy. People go crazy for them, it’s comfort food and feels a bit naughty.”

PADDO INN

338 Oxford St, Paddington

Head chef Mark Holland is from Yorkshire so you can be confident the Yorkshire pudding is legit. Riverine sirloin of beef, roast potatoes, red wine jus, kale, honey-mustard root vegetables, $24, is sold at the front bar and restaurant from noon.

Roast pork with apple sauce at The Tilbury.

THE TILBURY HOTEL

12-18 Nicholson St, Woolloomooloo

The $35 menu rotates every three weeks; roasted Cowra lamb leg, mint sauce, cauliflower cheese and roast potatoes, Rivalea pork loin, apple sauce, crackling and all the trimmings or Riverina striploin (marble Score 2), Yorkshire pudding, roasted pumpkin and potatoes.

DRAKE EATERY

Cnr Curlewis and Gould sts, Bondi

The meat changes each week, from Coorong Angus scotch fillet to Greenslade chicken and Mirrool Creek lamb leg. Sides include crispy potatoes, seasonal vegetables and Yorkshire puddings. Sundays from 12.30pm, from $32.

THE BELLEVUE

159 Hargrave St, Paddington

The $25 Sunday Roast is available at the bar and restaurant. It’s a rotating selection of proteins including the house-favourite slow-roasted pork with crispy crackling.

A vegetarian roast of pumpkin, parsnip, broccolini, carrot, charred onion, red cabbage, cauliflower, Yorkshire pudding with a porcini jus from The Fernery in Mosman.

THE FERNERY

Rooftop, 719 Military Rd, Mosman

Wood roasted in a Josper oven for a smoky flavour, there are meat and vegetable options, $25/$22. It could be Borrowdale free range pork rack, Wagyu beef or a vegetable medley with a porcini jus accompanied with acoustic tunes by the rooftop fire pits in winter.

MANLY WHARF HOTEL

East Esplanade, Manly

Cooked in a French rotisserie, the Sunday roast is available for lunch or dinner and changes weekly; Bannockburn free-range chicken, beef, lamb or pork with all the trimmings for $20, or $25 with a glass of house wine.

BANKSIA BISTRO

288 Princes Hwy, Banksia

During July you’ll get chermoula-rubbed lamb shoulder, warm winter vegetables and minted yoghurt, $27.

A classic Sunday roast with all the trimmings — including Yorkshire pud — from The Duke of Clarence, in the CBD.

THE DUKE OF CLARENCE

152/156 Clarence St, Sydney

It makes sense that a British-themed pub has a British Sunday roast, $26, on the menu. White meats — pork, chicken and turkey — rotates weekly, the beef using pasture-fed, highly marbled meat from Gippsland is a staple and vegetarians are catered for with roasted field mushroom with rice and cranberries, $23.

CLAREVILLE KIOSK

27 Delecta Ave, Clareville

British chef Tom Gillett serves Sunday roasts until the end of September at two lunch sittings; noon and 2pm. A main and dessert is $49, choose from pork loin with crackling and apple sauce, Brooklyn Valley sirloin and horseradish cream or blue eye cod and verjus plus all
the trimmings.

Originally published as The classic Sunday lunch is back on the menu