Hawksmoor Seven Dials Comfort Food: £29.50 Sunday Roast

Hawksmoor Seven Dials is at 11 Langley Street, London WC2H 9JG, inside what was once the Watney-Combe brewery, at one time the largest brewer in London. For comfort food, Sunday is the day to aim for: the dry-aged rump roast costs £29.50 and comes with beef dripping roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and lashings of bone marrow and onion gravy, served from 12pm until 5pm. On the other six days the steak, mash and macaroni cheese do the same job in the same room.

Hawksmoor tells a good origin story for this site. When the team dug into the building's past, they found that the brewery's first owner, Alderman Combe, hosted an annual steak supper for London's great and good. A newspaper report of the 1807 gathering noted that the company left the brewhouse late, highly gratified with their beef-steaks, and that the Duchess of York was lavish in her praise.

The room still carries that weight. The old brewhouse makes a generous dining room, and it suits a long, slow meal with friends more than a quick bite on the way somewhere else. Hawksmoor has run its restaurants on the same idea from the start: find the best beef and master the seemingly simple art of cooking steak. The group became a B Corp in 2022 and talks openly about how it treats its teams, which shows in service that is relaxed rather than stiff.

There is also a private dining room behind a curtain that seats up to 18, built for birthdays, pre-theatre dinners and engagement celebrations.

The Seven Dials roast menu gives three main choices. Dry-aged rump is £29.50. A thicker, slow-roasted dry-aged sirloin is £35. Both come with beef dripping roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, roasted carrots, buttered greens, roasted garlic and bone marrow and onion gravy. The vegetarian Winslade Wellington is £28, wrapped in golden pastry and served with roast potatoes cooked without beef dripping, Yorkshire pudding, carrots, greens, roasted garlic and onion gravy.

Groups of two or more can go for Sunday Feasting. You choose a sharing steak from the blackboard, and the kitchen suggests prime rib or Chateaubriand as the best fit, then add all the trimmings for £9.50. It is the most generous way to do a Sunday here.

Two Sunday sides are worth the extra spend. Hawksmoor stuffing is £8.00, a mix of bone marrow, onions, high-grade sausage and fresh herbs, and the cauliflower cheese at £7.50 is the side the restaurant itself calls a particular favourite. The menu is blunt that it is a hearty meal, so one side between two is plenty.

Timing matters. The roast is guaranteed until 5pm, and the restaurant warns that it cannot promise roasts after that. Booking is strongly recommended because Sundays get very busy.

Away from Sunday, the comfort lies in the sides and starters. Mash and gravy is £6.50, Tunworth mash £8.00, macaroni cheese £8.00 and beef dripping chips £7.00. Roasted bone marrow with slow-cooked onions is £12.00, and potted beef and bacon arrives with Yorkshire puddings and onion gravy for £12.00.

For the steak itself, a 275g rump is £29.00 and a 350g sirloin £44.00, and a bone marrow gravy, peppercorn sauce or béarnaise adds £4.00. The returning Longhorn Feast puts a 400g Longhorn rib-eye on the table for £56.00 with roasted bone marrow and slow-cooked onions. Longhorn is the native breed that helped shape Hawksmoor nearly twenty years ago, and supply is limited, so once those steaks are gone they are gone.

On a budget, the set menus are the best value in the building. Lunch runs at £21, £26 or £30 for one, two or three courses, and the early evening set menu is £26 for two courses or £30 for three. Pair the set menu with BYO Monday, when corkage is £5 a bottle all day, and you have what the restaurant itself calls a Hawksmoor hack. The team even points regulars toward the Majestic on Drury Lane for a bottle on the way in.

Weekend daytimes fill with shoppers from Covent Garden stopping for brunch, lunch or a cocktail, and evenings bring the Theatreland crowd before and after a show. The early evening set menu exists for exactly that pre-theatre window, so book it when you have tickets for a curtain-up nearby.

The kitchen serves lunch from 12pm to 3pm and dinner from 4:30pm to 9pm Monday to Thursday, with dinner running until 9:30pm on Friday. On Saturday it cooks straight through from 12pm to 9:30pm, and on Sunday from 12pm to 9pm. The bar keeps pouring after the last plates go out, which makes it a good place to finish an evening as well as start one.

The restaurant is fully accessible to wheelchair users, and the team asks you to mention allergies and dietary needs when you book.

Langley Street is a quiet lane between Long Acre and Shorts Gardens, and a few steps north you reach the Seven Dials sundial pillar where seven streets meet. Neal's Yard, with its painted shopfronts and cheese and wholefood shops, is a short walk west. Covent Garden Piazza, the market hall and the street performers are about five minutes south.

After a roast, a stroll along Neal Street toward Earlham Street makes a gentle walk, and the West End theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue and St Martin's Lane are close enough for a matinee. Covent Garden and Tottenham Court Road stations are both nearby.

Address: 11 Langley Street, London WC2H 9JG. Open Monday to Thursday from 11:45am to 11pm, Friday and Saturday from 11:45am to 11:30pm, and Sunday from 11:45am to 10:30pm. The dry-aged rump Sunday roast is £29.50 and the three-course set lunch is £30.

The closest car park is NCP Covent Garden at Parker Mews, and the nearest Santander bike dock is Drury Lane. Groups can make an enquiry through the website. When you want a fallback on a busy Sunday, the Karpo APP can show other roasts and comfort food spots open nearby in Covent Garden.