Five of the best restaurants for Sunday roast

PATERNOSTER CHOP HOUSE
Warwick Court, Paternoster Square, EC4 (020 7029 9400) £40

Morning service at St Paul's Cathedral followed by Sunday lunch in Paternoster Square next door has an unassailable correctness about it.

Sabbath meals in this previously Conran, now D&D London, restaurant are mercifully quieter than when businessmen (and women) are chasing mammon.

Chef Peter Weedon sources his produce with almost religious fervour. "Beast of the Day" on the Spring Sunday Lunch menu is Galloway beef from Ben Weatherall in Galloway and Dumfries. Like all creatures who are slow developers they have great flavour. Meat is bought on the bone and butchered in-house. Fish comes from day boats.

THE ONLY RUNNING FOOTMAN
5 Charles Street, W1 (020 7499 2988) £30

Wandering around Mayfair is agreeable on a Sunday and lunch at this recently washed and brushed-up pub could be followed by a movie at The Curzon including, if the film is not up to much, a snooze.

The Meredith Group, which also runs The Bull in Highgate and The House in Islington, took over last year. The dining room, overseen by Jeremy Hollingsworth who worked for Marco Pierre White for a meaningful amount of time, is too formal, a bit staid. The ground-floor bar is cheaper and more fun. Get there in good time to secure a table (no bookings) for the Sunday roast.

THE GRILL AT BROWN'S HOTEL
Albemarle Street, W1 (020 7493 6020) £40

Daft prices charged by posh hotels for afternoon tea make Sunday lunch at The Grill at Brown's — £25 for two courses — a comparative steal.

The fact that Mark Hix is consultant on the menu and has brought in chef Lee Streeton, who worked for him at Daphne's, means that the silver chariot bearing the roast rib of Glen Fyne beef can glide proudly around the spacious, quietly alluring dining room.

Starting with their brown Windsor soup would be a revelation but perhaps result in too meaty a meal. Try instead treacle-cured salmon with pickled fennel and cucumber.

THE WELLS
30 Well Walk, NW3 (020 7794 3785) £32

A few weeks ago when I ate Sunday lunch in my sister Beth Coventry's Hampstead pub, a Yorkshire pudding the size of a spaceship cradled roasted root vegetables in onion gravy.

I had chosen the vegetarian option, but I also saw airy spheres of batter where they really belonged, alongside slices of exemplary roast beef. I decided that next time it would be a carnivorous outing.

The hot news is that Beth is back in the kitchen led by Greg Smith and sometimes her revered steak and kidney puddings are available for Sunday lunch. A walk on the Heath is the ideal digestif.

PEARL LIANG
8 Sheldon Square, W2 (020 7289 7000) £30

A Sunday roast need not always be the beef of Olde Englande. Or even Gloucester Old Spot pork or Herdwick lamb.

Even when I order mostly the first-rate dim sum at this glamorous yet friendly Chinese restaurant nestled in a development that would seem more at home in Hong Kong than next to Paddington Basin, I can't resist the barbecued roasted duck.

Available as quarter, half or whole, the meat is tender and juicy, the skin aniseedy and lacquered. Its richness is well offset by an order of green vegetables stir-fried with garlic, preferably the pea shoots called dau miu.

● Prices estimate Sunday lunch with wine and service for one.