Sunday lunch used to be the best meal of the week - at home, that is. But as we now eat out so much more often, any day can be a good meal day. Occasionally, it’s good to get back to basics and with The Green’s Sunday roast you can do just that.

The Venue
The Green, on the bottom left-hand corner of Clerkenwell Green, looks as if it might once have been a pub. In recent times it was Jean-Christophe Novelli’s east London outpost, but when that closed, The Green appeared – and very nice it is too. It has a gastropub look about it with its informal setting. There are also tables and chairs outside for such times when the weather is good. The bar serves a sit-down lunch and has a small plate snack menu for the evening. Upstairs there’s a more formal dining room used mainly at night, but for a traditional Sunday lunch, the ground floor room is just fine.

The Atmosphere
The setting, with its view of Clerkenwell Green, helps with the ambience of the vicinity. Historical point: the original Clerk’s Well is a just few doors down, while The Green (the restaurant, that is) is just far enough away from the busy Farringdon Road to make it comfortable. Some good and serious drinking is enjoyed here and certainly the families who gather for the Saturday brunch or the Sunday roast lunch obviously know they are on to a good thing. It’s relaxing and trouble-free and all the staff engender a really welcoming atmosphere.

The Food
During the week the lunch menu is modern European and English (fresh fish, meat dishes, homemade pies and puddings) which carries on upstairs during the evening while, from 5pm, the ground floor bar serves its small, tapas style plates for under a fiver. Lunch and dinner during the week might offer such dishes as smoked duck and Parma ham or goat’s cheese and red peppers for starters, and fishcakes, roast salmon or pan-fried chicken with Mediterranean vegetables for main courses. Honey panna cotta and caramel bananas or watermelon and Spanish melon salad could be the desserts. The Saturday brunch menu features Eggs Benedict, Florentine or Royal, scrambled eggs on toasted crumpets with smoked salmon, a smoked haddock rarebit and poached egg, French toast, steak baguette and black pudding.

The Sunday roast offers just two courses, a main and a pudding. There’s a choice of roast, with beef, chicken or pork, or a fish and a vegetarian option. Prices range from £9.95 to £12.95. The horseradish and maple roasted sirloin of British beef is served with roasted garlic, roast parsnips and onion gravy, so you can imagine just how good it is. Thick, juicy slices of the meat are as tasty as anything and just as roast beef should be: pinkish but not too pink, tender and yielding to the knife so that it does not need too much carving, and simply packed with the flavours of the accompanying vegetables. Similarly the roast corn-fed chicken is a hearty bird with a stuffing made from chorizo sausage and with greens and real chicken gravy: again as tender and scrumptious as can be. The roast loin of pork with stuffed baked apple and red cabbage is equally fine.

Roast salmon hardly seems like a Sunday roast treat but with crushed new potatoes, black olives and the piquant harissa sauce, it sounds quite exceptional. All the main courses are served with a bowl of roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and a selection of fresh vegetables. Those potatoes, well- roasted to within an inch of their lives, are to die for, while the Yorkshires have a lovely texture, being both crisp and doughy. What a superb plateful. For dessert the summer fruits bread and butter pudding is a delicious and comforting variation on an old theme, the rhubarb apple crumble is a nicely tart favourite, and the egg custard and Irish coffee cheesecake both score well.

The Drink
House wine is from £3.60 or £4.90 a glass and £13.95 a bottle. The very good red Grenache Le Beau Chene, 2006, at £14.95, provides a good accompaniment to all the roast meats. An imaginative list of other reds rises to the £68 mark for a Chateau Trottevielle, St Emillion, 1er Grand Cru 1998, while the whites are priced up to £42 for a Meursault Limousin Burgundy 2004. The usual range of spirits, draught beers and real ales are all available, as are various non-alcoholic drinks, both hot and cold.

The Last Word
The Green’s Sunday lunch could well be the last word in roasts. It is certainly a popular treat for the locals and, if you’ve nothing to do on a Sunday from noon to 4.30pm or from 6pm to 9pm, head straight for The Green on Clerkenwell Green and you will not be disappointed.

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