Sunday roast: back on the menu in Hong Kong
It’s just meat and potatoes—but sometimes, that’s enough to move you. It’s not a chicken hurriedly crisped in an air fryer, nor a perfectly sliced sliver of Wagyu on a tasting menu plate. This is meat left to blister, be basted and rest. Potatoes burnished and bronzed by duck fat and heat. A Yorkshire pudding risen from batter, against the odds.
In a city that dines fast and forgets faster, the roast can feel out of place. There are faster ways to eat, smarter, more creative menus to chase. And yet the roast is reappearing—slowly and steadily—not as a trend, but as an answer. Perhaps we are exhausted by all the novelty, by food that performs more than it feeds. The roast asks nothing of us but presence. It’s not here to impress—it’s here to gather us.
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Magistracy Dining Room’s steak tartare and prawn cocktail crumpets
Crispy pork belly, slow-cooked rib of beef and all the trimmings at Magistracy Dining Room
Born in 15th-century England from the need to feed many with little, the Sunday roast became habit, then heritage: beef on Sundays after church, eaten slowly and often followed by a nap. It was never glamorous, but it was grounding. Even the French insult les Rosbifs only made the English more certain it mattered. In Hong Kong, its arrival came with colonial baggage: served in officers’ clubs and hotel dining rooms, an assertion of power disguised as tradition. Eventually, it faded, replaced by avocado toast and bottomless brunch, foods that promise freedom but come with time limits and QR codes.
Now, it’s back—but it’s not the same. At Magistracy Dining Room, chef Alyn Williams, an East London native, serves a succulent roast with highlights including a crispy crackling pork belly and slow-cooked rib of beef, accompanied by Yorkshire pudding and roasted vegetables. Other indulgent dishes such as double-baked Lincolnshire poacher (cheese) soufflé, Three Yellow chicken shortcrust pie and grilled salmon are also available. The setting may echo empire, but the atmosphere is generous and joyful.
Lobster Bar and Grill’s serves roast beef
The dessert pies at Lobster Bar and Grill
Over at Lobster Bar and Grill, the roast comes draped in opulence: oysters on ice, lobster bisque and Boston lobster in garlic butter if beef won’t do. Potatoes crisped in duck fat are served family-style, alongside cauliflower cheese and luscious gravy. Dessert is banoffee pie or tarte tatin, flipped tableside like a magician’s reveal. It’s traditional hotel luxury, yes, but with genuine warmth.
And at Bourke’s, nestled on Peel Street, the roast is stripped back to what matters: a well-roasted local chicken with golden potatoes, baby carrots and Yorkshire pudding ingeniously filled with mint pea salad, served with rich gravy. It’s casual, Australian-accented, and entirely sincere.
Bourke’s Sunday roast chicken comes with potatoes, baby carrots and Yorkshire pudding filled with mint pea salad
But this isn’t really about where to eat on Sunday. It’s about what the roast makes room for: time, company and the pleasure of a meal that doesn’t rush to be over. The roast offers something rare—a reason to gather, and permission to stay. Maybe that’s the real revival: not just the return of the roast, but the return of the long, unhurried Sunday.
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