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Forbes
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
10 Of London's Best Restaurants For Sunday Roasts
Sunday Roast at The Engineer The Engineer If you're visiting London, don't miss one of the UK's favorite traditions: the Sunday roast. The capital offers some of the best spots to experience tenderly roasted meat, golden crispy potatoes, seasonal vegetables and of course, fluffy Yorkshire puddings. From casual pubs to fancier establishments, here are some of the top places in London to enjoy a proper Sunday roast. The Engineer, Primrose Hill, London The Engineer After a recent major refurbishment, Primrose Hill's favorite neighborhood pub, The Engineer is back, welcoming locals and visitors with an awesome Sunday roast offering. The pub dates back to the 1800s and is named after famous former area resident, the bridge and railway engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. You can enjoy your roast in the walled garden or upstairs in the pretty top floor dining room. On Sundays, a 16oz Chateaubriand for sharing is served with Yorkshire pudding, thyme-roasted potatoes, buttered savoy cabbage, roasted root vegetables and rich gravy. Other roasts include aged sirloin of beef, British half roast chicken and a walnut roast, all with full trimmings. If you think you'll have room for starters, the Handmade Scotch Egg, Devon Crab on Toasted Brioche and Burrata with Isle of Wight tomatoes are all excellent choices. Origin City's Sunday excellent lunch menu follows the restaurant's pasture to plate, nose to tail ethos, with all of the meat coming from the family's 600 acre farm in Argyll, Scotland, including traditional heritage breed meats such as Black Angus and Tamworth Pork. Three organic meats are on offer for Sunday roast: slow roasted Black Angus, with creamed horseradish; succulent Tamworth Pork with bramley apple sauce and Texel Lamb with a classic mint sauce. Sides include fluffy Yorkshire puddings, crispy beef dripping potatoes, sweet glazed heritage carrots, Brussel sprouts, creamy cauliflower cheese and lashings of rich gravy. Sunday Roast at CUT 45 Park Lane 45 Park Lane Served in elegant art deco surroundings of 45 Park Lane hotel, CUT, Wolfgang Puck's only London restaurant, serves a stellar Sunday lunch, including a satisfying traditional roast. Executive Chef Elliott Grover's starters are not to be missed either from seared Orkney Scallops to Dorset Crab and the Lobster 'Louis' cocktail. The Sunday roast offers a choice of roasted grass-fed English Beef Sirloin, 22-day Beef Wellington or Vegetarian Wellington. Each dish is served with roast potatoes, tenderstem broccoli, honey roasted carrots and parsnips, cauliflower cheese, confit shallot, and incredible Wagyu dripping Yorkshire pudding and gravy. The Guinea Grill The Guinea Grill The historic Guinea Grill has had an Inn on this site since 1423 and the current restaurant opened in 1952. Since then it has served dry-aged, grass-fed British beef from an open grill. The Sunday roast features: a choice of roast fore rib of grass fed dry aged beef; slow-cooked pork belly with crackling; grilled sirloin joint or, for vegetarians, sweet potato, wild mushroom and roquefort gratin. Sides include crispy-on-the-outside-fluffy-on-the inside duck fat roasties, double-egg Yorkshires and plenty of gravy. at The Yard, Westminster Ekstedt at the Yard Ekstedt The Swedish-inspired Sunday roast at Ekstedt at The Yard offers a bold Nordic take on the British classic, with every dish on the roast menu cooked over open flames. The menu features succulent beef joints and tender game meats, accompanied by perfectly roasted root vegetables. Mains can be shared or guests can opt for two or three courses, all of which come with complimentary sides. Twenty Two, Mayfair The Twenty Two Sunday roast Jack Mather The Twenty Two, led by Chef Alan Christie (formerly of Arbutus), has a delicious Sunday roast that includes: roast Cornish red chicken; Mount Grace Farm lamb and Aberdeen sirloin beef, all served with classic trimmings. Other standout dishes include Dover Sole Meunière, Asparagus and Pea Risotto, and Seared Tuna with miso and chilli. Located in a stylish Mayfair hotel opened in 2022, the interiors in shades of blue, are so beautiful. The drinks offering includes an excellent wine list, creative cocktails, and a Bloody Mary trolley with house-made spiced tomato juice and bold garnishes like crispy bacon. 7.Bébé Bob, Soho Bebe Bob, Soho, London Paul Winch-Furness Bébé Bob, the Soho restaurant renowned for its luxurious take on rotisserie chicken offers a French chicken twist on the classic British Sunday Roast. Chicken lovers will rejoice when tasting the roast chicken, rare breed from Vendée or a whole roast chicken, finest corn-fed naked neck chicken from Caen, Normandy. Both dishes are served with chicken dripping Yorkshire puddings, chicken fat roast potatoes and honey roasted carrots and parsnips. Wigmore, Upper Regent Street Sunday Roast at The Wigmore The Wigmore The Wigmore, a stylish pub in the Langham Hotel, serves a traditional Sunday Roast, styled on the classics with a contemporary edge. The menu includes a half-roasted lemon and thyme Baby Chicken, 32 day aged Northumbrian Beef Rump and Three Root vegetable and chestnut Wellington. Served alongside are Bloody Mary Salt duck fat roasties, organic carrots, tenderstem broccoli, buttered Savoy cabbage, traditional gravy and for the extra wow factor, The Wigmore triple cheese roasted cauliflower. Brush East London Grand Café, Hoxton The Brush's new Sunday Roast menu has four delicious options: Roast striploin of beef with thyme gravy; Half roast corn-fed chicken; Mushroom Wellington, paired with a rich roast onion gravy and a Whole grilled seabass (to share) glazed with burnt butter and capers. Eavh roast comes with Yorkshire pudding, crispy roast potatoes, cauliflower cheese and roast carrots. There's also a Bloody Mary menu featuring a classic Bloody Mary; smoky Bloody Maria with Ojo De Dios Mezcal; Hoxton Bloody Mix with a smoked salt rim; or London's Mary with Plymouth Gin. Alma Pub, Wandsworth The Alma Pub in southwest London has an incredible roast lineup including: the Thors Hammer 48-hour slow braised bone in shin of beef; Whole Suffolk Free Range Chicke; Whole Highland Venison Shoulder; and Cote de Boeuf 45 day aged Aberdeen Angus. All roasts are served with all the trimmings, from duck fat roast potatoes and maple glazed carrots to charred tenderstem broccoli, shallot puree and double egg Yorkshire puddings
The Guardian
17-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
UK's £225m AI supercomputer, Isambard-AI, launches in Bristol
Britain's new £225m national artificial intelligence supercomputer will be used to spot sick dairy cows in Somerset, improve the detection of skin cancer on brown skin and help create wearable AI assistants that could help riot police anticipate danger. Scientists hope Isambard-AI – named after the 19th-century engineer of groundbreaking bridges and railways, Isambard Kingdom Brunel – will unleash a wave of AI-powered technological, medical and social breakthroughs by allowing academics and public bodies access to the kind of vast computing power previously the preserve of private tech companies. The supercomputer was formally switched on in Bristol on Thursday by the secretary of state for science and technology, Peter Kyle, who said it gave the UK 'the raw computational horsepower that will save lives, create jobs, and help us reach net zero-ambitions faster'. The machine is fitted with 5,400 Nvidia 'superchips' and sits inside a black metal cage topped with razor wire north of the city. It will consume almost £1m a month of mostly nuclear-powered electricity and will run 100,000 times faster than an average laptop. Amid fierce international competition for computing power, it is the largest publicly acknowledged facility in the UK but will be the 11th fastest in the world behind those in the US, Japan, Germany, Italy, Finland and Switzerland. Elon Musk's new xAI supercomputer in Tennessee already has 20 times its processing power, while Meta's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, is planning a datacentre that 'covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan'. The investment is part of the government's £2bn push to attain 'AI sovereignty' so Britain does not have to rely on foreign processing chips to make AI-enabled research progress. But the switch-on could trigger new ethical dilemmas about how far AI should be allowed to steer policy on anything from the control of public protests to the breeding of animals. One AI model under development by academics at the University of Bristol is an algorithm that learns from thousands of hours of footage on human motion, captured using wearable cameras. The idea is to try to predict how humans could move next. It could be applied to a wide range of scenarios, including enabling police to predict how crowds of protesters may behave, or predict accidents in an industrial setting such as a construction site. Dima Damen, a professor of computer vision at the university, said based on patterns in the human behaviours a wearable camera was capturing in real time, the algorithm, trained by Isambard-AI, could even 'give an early warning that in the next two minutes, something is likely to happen here'. Damen added there were 'huge ethical implications of AI' and it would be important to always know why a system made a decision. 'One of the fears of AI is that some people will own the technology and the knowhow and others won't,' she said. 'It's our biggest duty as researchers to make sure that the data and the knowledge is available for everyone.' Another AI model under development could detect early infections in cows. A herd in Somerset is being filmed around the clock to train a model to predict if an animal is in the early stages of mastitis, which affects milk production and is an animal welfare problem. The scientists at Bristol believe this could be possible based on detecting subtle shifts in cows' social behaviour. 'The farmer obviously takes a great interest in their herd, but they don't necessarily have the time to look at all of the cows in their herd continuously day in, day out, so the AI will be there to provide that view,' said Andrew Dowsey, a professor of health data science at the University of Bristol. A third group of researchers are using the supercomputer to detect bias in the detection of skin cancer. James Pope, a senior lecturer in data science at the University of Bristol, has already run 'quadrillions if not quintillions of computations' on Isambard to find that current phone apps to check moles and lesions for signs of cancer are performing better on lighter coloured skin. If confirmed with further testing, apps could be retuned to avoid bias. 'It would be quite difficult, and frankly impossible to do it with a traditional computer,' he said.
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Call for memories of historic Brunel railway station
A history festival is calling for memories of a former railway station, which will be temporarily reopened during the event. Cirencester History Festival takes place from 25 October to 1 November, offering talks and activities on local and global history. People will be able to tour the town's Grade-II listed Old Station, which was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and closed in 1965. The free event on both Saturdays of the festival will celebrate the "golden age of rail," said festival producer Jess Yarrow. Ms Yarrow said most people know the Old Station as "a slightly sad, empty-looking building" but she hopes some will remember using it, on their commute, or even watching it welcome evacuees and soldiers during World War Two. "We know that there are lots of people out there who can remember the station in its heyday," said Ms Yarrow. "We'd love to hear stories, we'd love to see photographs, we'd love to have any memorabilia that people have got tucked away because we'll be dressing the station as if it were a station with prams and benches and cases, so anything like that people have, we'd love to know about it." More news stories for Gloucestershire Listen to the latest news for Gloucestershire Architect Jonathan Rixon is refurbishing the station to use as his offices, and he will lead the tours. There will also be an audio listening project sharing stories of the station, and Cirencester College students have worked with Mr Rixon to create a virtual reality experience of the station during the Victoria era. Mr Rixon said: "The building holds many hidden treasures, including a boardroom where Brunel sought a meeting space outside London. "It's important to protect our industrial heritage. I'm passionate about preserving this piece of history and sharing it with the town." Cirencester History Festival is returning for its second year, with This Country star Charlie Cooper as its ambassador. Follow BBC Gloucestershire on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630. Council seeks partner to help restore old station Former railway station to be repaired after investment Hope of restoration as former station to be sold Cirencester History Festival
BBC News
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Memories of Cirencester's Old Station sought for history festival
A history festival is calling for memories of a former railway station, which will be temporarily reopened during the History Festival takes place from 25 October to 1 November, offering talks and activities on local and global will be able to tour the town's Grade-II listed Old Station, which was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and closed in free event on both Saturdays of the festival will celebrate the "golden age of rail," said festival producer Jess Yarrow. Ms Yarrow said most people know the Old Station as "a slightly sad, empty-looking building" but she hopes some will remember using it, on their commute, or even watching it welcome evacuees and soldiers during World War Two."We know that there are lots of people out there who can remember the station in its heyday," said Ms Yarrow. "We'd love to hear stories, we'd love to see photographs, we'd love to have any memorabilia that people have got tucked away because we'll be dressing the station as if it were a station with prams and benches and cases, so anything like that people have, we'd love to know about it." Architect Jonathan Rixon is refurbishing the station to use as his offices, and he will lead the will also be an audio listening project sharing stories of the station, and Cirencester College students have worked with Mr Rixon to create a virtual reality experience of the station during the Victoria Rixon said: "The building holds many hidden treasures, including a boardroom where Brunel sought a meeting space outside London. "It's important to protect our industrial heritage. I'm passionate about preserving this piece of history and sharing it with the town."Cirencester History Festival is returning for its second year, with This Country star Charlie Cooper as its ambassador.
Daily Mail
13-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Locals living in dead end ghost town say their high street is now a cruel joke with shuttered up shops and THREE bakeries
When a new shopping centre was built to 'put a heart into Swindon' more than 50 years ago, it seemed fitting to name it after the famous railway engineer who put the town on the map - Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Half a century on, the landmark building in the centre of the Witlshire town looks to have run out of steam. Almost half of the stores and units inside The Brunel Centre have closed and those that remain struggle to attract shoppers as they increasingly switch to online purchases and out-of-town retail parks. The next-door multi-storey car park is virtually empty and appears run-down and unmanned. Despite the frontages of several former showpiece Brunel Centre stores like House of Fraser and Marks & Spencer, which closed in 2021 and 2023 respectively, being emblazoned with trendy-looking '#The Best of Swindon' signage, the site is now more notable for having three Greggs outlets within a 100-metre radius. One of the Greggs premises is so popular it has a 40-seat eating area and all three footsteps had lengthy queues for most of the day. As one local, 69-year-old Jeff Barton put it: 'Swindon has become Greggs Central now. The town is fast filling up with their rubbish bakeries. I wouldn't go near them.' A retired Swindon council groundsman, Mr Barton remembered fondly his days spent working to enhance the town's sense of civic pride. He said: 'One of my responsibilities was to make the town centre look nice. There were plants and flowers everywhere back in my day - we had 84 hanging baskets full of them around The Brunel Centre and it looked wonderful. 'You go there now and everything's closing and it looks a mess outside. It is so sad.' His wife, Denise, 68, now also retired from her job working in admin, agreed. She said: 'It used to be such a pleasure coming into town, but nowadays we avoid it when we can because it's so depressing. 'I hate to say it, but I think it's all over for Swindon. The place we knew and loved has gone and it's not coming back. 'Shopping habits have changed because of the internet and that's partly to blame, but how can people buy clothes without trying them on first and having a feel of the fabric? 'All we'll have left in town soon will be streets full of coffee shops - mostly Greggs by the look of things.' With many areas of Swindon experiencing high levels of poverty - 10 per cent of its neighbourhoods are among the worst in England and it ranks 157th out of 326 local authorities in the Index of Multiple Deprivation - it was no surprise when pound shops moved into the town centre. But today, two of the three that set up have recently closed, prompting Mrs Barton to say: 'Even the pound shops are leaving Swindon now. That tells you everything about how the town is dying.' When Brunel and his plans for the Great Western Railway arrived in 1843, Swindon was little more than a sleepy market town on top of a hill. Brunel identified it as a site for GWR's locomotive repair and maintenance works because of its strategic location between London and Bristol, it quickly grew into a thriving railway hub that would become one of the largest railway engineering complexes in the world at its peak. Even the town's Poundland's store on the corner of Regent Street and Havelock Square shut last month, with the company unable to agree on lease terms to keep them trading at the site Architect Douglas Stephen, who designed The Brunel Centre, was an admirer of Brunel and included many railway-themed features in his creation, including a roof built to echo Paddington Station. But in recent years, shoppers have abandoned the once-thriving centre and the streets around it are near-deserted. A market hall next door ceased trading eight years ago and many adjacent shops are boarded up. James Steward, who runs a jewellery and watch-making shop set up by his father next to the now-derelict market hall, says Swindon's decline was 'accelerated' by the Covid lockdown. Mr Steward, 49, said: 'People's shopping habits changed dramatically during the pandemic and many of them haven't really come back. 'There are other factors too and I think the decline here is part of a global trend that we are seeing all over the world. 'A lot of people work from home now. Their offices in town have since closed so there's no reason for them to come here any more. 'They used to pop in at lunchtime and buy a watch or jewellery but I guess they're buying it online now, if at all. As a result, shops here are closing all the time. 'I've noticed a lot of my older, more affluent customers are now going to Bath or Cirencester and making a day of it, rather than coming here. 'I'm proud to be a Swindonian and I hate talking the town down, but in all honesty, it's difficult to defend it nowadays. 'If I've got a day off now, I won't come here either. I'll get the family in the car and we'll have a day out somewhere else instead. 'The council need to think harder about how to get people back into Swindon. I'd start by abolishing, or at least significantly reducing, car park charges. They've gone through the roof, and it puts people off coming because they can be a tenner down before they've even parked up. 'And they need to work with the police to crack down on the muggers and gangs who gather here at night so people feel safe in Swindon again.' Finance worker Ana Banca, 51, said she has 'had enough' of living in Swindon and wants to move. 'It's not safe walking around the town centre, especially at night. There's no way I'd be in the town centre in the evenings now. There have been loads of stabbings and robberies in the past year or two, and drugs are a massive problem. 'And during the day, it just feels dead. The decent shops have closed down and it's all Greggs and coffee shops. 'The town feels dirty and very sad.' In The Brunel Centre itself, we find retired NHS nurse Susan O'Neill, 76, who remembers the site's heyday with pride. 'I used to love coming here,' she said. 'The place was buzzing with people and there were some marvellous shops. But you look around now and half the shops have closed down and the other half are empty. 'It saddens me to say it but I think the town centre as we know it is finished. 'Not just here, mind - it's the same everywhere. 'I think it's time to reinvent town centres and do things differently. For Swindon, I'd love to see the town centre become a hub for the arts. We could accept that town centre shopping has had its day and replace retail with theatres, art galleries, music events and lovely places to eat and meet people.' Her friend, Martin Collison, 82 and a retired project manager, said: 'I agree with her. We need to find a way of bringing the vibrancy back to Swindon so people want to come into town again.' Retired fire and rescue service chaplain the Rev John Maxwell, 79, blames ever-rising rents and business rates for Swindon's economic decline, saying: 'It's no wonder all the shops are closing down - they just can't afford to be here any longer. 'The only brand that seems to be doing well is Greggs. Personally, I can't stand their food or coffee, but many people around here must like what they're doing because they've got three shops here and they're always busy.'
