Sunday Feasting at The Ned

If you know me, you’ll know that I love a buffet. Hotel breakfast buffet? Yes please. Sushi buffet? Hell yeah. Salad bar? Just pass over a bowl. And so when I heard that The Ned in Bank did a Sunday lunch buffet, I’d booked faster than you can say ‘roast dinner’.

The Ned is a new hotel, ran by the guys behind Soho House. It’s got something like nine restaurants just in the Atrium. In a previous life, it was the head office of Midlands Bank and now, it’s a hotel with an amazing food court. All of the restaurants are located on the ground floor with low walls in between them, meaning that it’s still extremely open. Right in the middle, they have a jazz quartet playing. It’s all very snazzy, without being pretentious or intimidating.

The Sunday Feast as it’s called, is held at Millie’s Lounge. I’d recommend booking as it gets extremely busy. For £35 per person, you’re free to eat as much as you’d like. Drinks aren’t included but are extremely fairly priced. Most bottles of wine fall between the £20 and £30 mark, meaning that there’s a good selection without breaking the bank.

Now, let’s get on to the good bit. The food. The selection is huge. The buffet goes around the entire bar and there is so much to choose from. Broadly, you can opt for:

• Brunch items like sausages and kedgeree
• Salads and charcuterie
• Seafood, including half lobsters, prawns, smoked salmon and oysters
• Roasts
• Desserts
• Sweets
• Cheese

If that hasn’t got you salivating, then we probably shouldn’t be friends anymore.

I opted for a seafood starter, including lobster, prawns and avocado. Everything was extremely good quality and was a perfect start to the lunch. TBH, I probably could have had another half a lobster at least, but knowing what else was on offer, I wanted to be sensible. Slow and steady wins the race and all of that.

I then had some salads which were tasty, but let’s move straight on to talking about the roasts. For my roast course, I had lamb, veg and roasties. Unfortunately both the gravy and the Yorkshires weren’t gluten free, but I have it on good authority from the boy that these were top notch! What I can tell you though, is that the lamb was probably the best roast lamb I’ve ever had (sorry mum…). It was genuinely melt-in-the-mouth and so tasty. By far, the star of the show. The boy had the beef as well as the lamb and said ‘I’d have it again, I enjoyed it thoroughly’. I mean, that’s not particularly descriptive, but I guess it shows that it was good. You’d think that going out with a food blogger that he would have gotten better at that by now.

To end, I piled my bowl high with all of the sugar! Heaps of pick and mix, marshmallows, lemon posset. If it was gluten-free, then it was coming in my bowl.

By this point, I was stuffed but I tried to power through and made a good stab at it. To eat all of this, we had two hours. On paper, it doesn’t seem like a long time but it was more than enough.

The quality of the food and the service was top-notch. The staff were all friendly, attentive and helpful – all smiley and constantly running around to get more drinks etc.

I would totally recommend trying it out. It’s good for a group of you (as there’s something for everyone) but also for a couple. It was the perfect Sunday date day. We got a little dressed up, but there really didn’t seem to be a dress code, so it’s a great all-rounder!

Do you have any good buffet recommendations for London?

Sammy x