It seems like every pub and restaurant in England boasts about its “Sunday Roast,” and I was curious to try it out. After some debate about the best places, we made reservations for a mid-afternoon Sunday dinner at The Mole Inn at Toot Bolden (http://www.moleinn.com/), a delightful restaurant in an isolated corner of Oxford.

Approaching the Mole Inn from the car park.

 Its location isn’t obvious, but it clearly isn’t any secret to the locals either. Despite a sprawling and extensive set of dining rooms, the place was packed. With good reason. The food was fabulous.

The Sunday Roast menu offered a choice of lamb or beef and several sides. I got the lamb, which I regarded as a treat. It’s a meat I like but don’t often get in the U.S. This was a superb version–several tender, thick, juicy slices of roast lamb, served with mashed potatoes, a variety of roasted vegetables which included turnips and swede, gravy, and a Yorkshire pudding.  The only thing I found disappointing was the Yorkshire pudding.  I’ve been making Yorkshire pudding myself for years, and while what I’m used to probably isn’t “the real thing”—whatever that might be—the inn’s version seemed a bit overcooked, dry, and chewy to me.

Church lychgate

It was the only thing that disappointed however and very minor. The rest of the meal was delicious.

My husband and I also went for the Mole Inn’s Real Underground Ale, a beverage brewed locally and bottled specifically for the inn. For this we had our choice of chilled or ambient.  He went the chilled route, while I had mine ambient. It’s more traditional, but I also tend to have trouble drinking things that are either very hot or very cold, so it suited me try it the old-fashioned way (for Britain, at least). I’m not a big consumer of either beer or ale, though an occasional one can taste very good, especially on a hot day after hard work in the garden or on some other outdoor project.  I’ve found I prefer ale to beer, and this was quite good.  It bore a surprisingly strong resemblance to a local-craft brewed ale that I particularly like. (Natty Greene’s Wildflower Witbier ) I called that one a definite win.

Grandkitty Tigger with the ale bottles from The Mole Inn

I don’t remember what the rest of the party ate, but I do know that none of us went home hungry. Again we took a walk around the neighborhood of the inn after dinner, wandering down some narrow country roads. We were rewarded when we arrived at a pretty little country church with a picturesque lychgate, decorated for a wedding, and a nice view of the side over the rolling Oxfordshire countryside.

We kept the ale bottles from the inn as a souvenir. The photo shows our grand-kitty, Tigger, on the table with them. No, he didn’t attempt to check out any possible remaining contents. He’s mostly a gentleman, except when he spots a promising empty lap. He will take control of said lap with dispatch and without prior notice, assuming –usually rightly – that he’s just too cute and cuddly to be unwelcome.