Cafe Clement Makes Sunday Roast Feel Like Summer
Cafe Clement Makes Sunday Roast Feel Like Summer
Cafe Clement serves a gorgeous, garden-fresh roast in a slightly odd corner of London
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll already know that the hype around Cafe Clement is off the charts.
It sits inside the new St Clement hotel, just behind the river near Temple, with Nick Jones of Soho House fame behind the project and ex-River Cafe chef Danny Bohan in the kitchen. So yes, before you even sit down, there is a certain amount of expectation floating around.
I’m here to see whether the hype is deserved or not, and I arrive sceptical. But it soon becomes clear that, Sunday roast at least, is fantastic at Cafe Clement.
The setting? A little stranger.
Quick info on Cafe Clement at 180 Strand
- Restaurant: Cafe Clement
- Where: St Clement hotel, near Temple, London
- Cuisine: European, French-Italian leaning, all-day dining
- Must order: Cheese souffle, lamb Sunday roast, hazelnut praline gelato
- Worth knowing: The terrace is (heavily) covered and doesn’t have the river view you might expect.
- Price: The Sunday roast is £35, including your choice of protein and shared sides. With starters, bottled water and gelato, our bill came to around £70 per person
- Details: Party of 2. Meal paid for by us independently
Find out more in the full Sunday roast at Cafe Clement review below.
Getting to Cafe Clement feels like finding London’s newest backwater
Getting to Cafe Clement London is not exactly a gentle little stroll through one of London’s loveliest pockets.
You have to navigate the Circle line, which already feels like a test of character, and then you emerge into this slightly odd stretch of the Thames that doesn’t yet feel fully alive. There are signs of investment everywhere. New buildings, new restaurants. The sense that someone, somewhere, is trying very hard to make this patch of London happen.
And maybe it is happening.
Because, despite the lacklustre initial appearance, by 2pm, the dining room at Cafe Clement is absolutely packed.
The crowd is slightly older, very chic, and dressed in that expensive off-duty way where everyone looks relaxed but probably owns excellent tailoring. So clearly, Cafe Clement is already pulling people in.
Still, the location itself feels a little in-between.
Not quite riverfront, not quite somewhere you’d naturally wander into by accident.
The terrace sounds better than it feels
To get to the Cafe Clement, we pass through the bright white St Clement hotel lobby and climb a (very) green staircase. And I do mean green. This is a bold, slightly 70s green that feels one lampshade away from a slightly naff members’ club.
Happily, the restaurant itself is very chic in browns and creams. Inside is spacious and generously laid out, with plenty of tables, an open kitchen and doors leading out onto the self-described south-facing terrace.
Now, technically, yes, the terrace is outside.
But if you’re imagining sunshine, river views and a sparkling Thames moment, rein that fantasy in immediately.
The restaurant is on the street behind the river, so there isn’t much of a view. The terrace is also so thoroughly covered that the light becomes quite flat and blue-tinged, almost antiseptic. Inside, even by the windows, the room feels darker than it should because the covered terrace blocks so much natural light.
It’s not quite the glowing riverside lunch I had expected.
Luckily, the food does a much better job of providing the sunshine.
The Cafe Clement menu is expensive, but not outrageous
The broader Cafe Clement menu is very much in the new London hotel restaurant mold: polished, European, seasonal and confident with pricing.
The Sunday roast is £35, which includes your choice of protein and the sides. Options include Somerset lamb leg, prime rib, chicken and trout, which all sound very elegant.
By the time we add starters, bottled water and dessert, the bill comes to around £70 per person. So yes, it is high-ish. But given the quality of the cooking, the amount of food and the general London-ness of everything, I don’t leave feeling mugged.
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The cheese souffle is exactly how lunch should begin
We start with the cheese souffle, made with Montgomery cheddar, gruyere and aged Comté.
It arrives soft, golden and deeply cheesy, with that warm, savoury richness that stops conversation for a moment. The texture is light, but the flavour is full-throttle dairy joy.
The zucchini fritters are fresh, minty and very snackable
We also order the zucchini fritters from the snacks section of the Cafe Clement menu. These are surprisingly light and bouncy, imbued with a mintiness that is really rather delicious.
They have crisp little edges and a flurry of Parmesan that gives everything a salty lift.
Between the souffle and fritters, Cafe Clement starts very strongly.
And then the roast arrives.
The lamb roast is summery in the best possible way
We both choose the Somerset lamb leg from the Sunday roast menu.
Each plate arrives with two thin slices of lamb and a very generous pile of roast potatoes. On the side are bowls of slow-cooked peas, braised rainbow chard, and creamed leeks with gruyere and breadcrumbs, all intended for sharing.
The lamb itself is delicious.
It’s tender, full of flavour and beautifully cooked, although I do think a third slice would have felt more appropriate. Two slices looks a little sparse, especially when you’re paying £35 for the roast. There are also a few gristly, fatty, connective-tissuey bits that only a truly committed carnivore would tackle.
We politely move those to the side of the plate and carry on.
The roast potatoes are fantastic. Think golden nuggets that are properly crisp on the outside and fluffy within. Proper roast potatoes.
And the vegetables are just as good.
The peas are sweet and silky with onions. The rainbow chard brings freshness. And the creamed leeks are rich, nutty and quietly luxurious, with the gruyere and breadcrumbs adding exactly the right amount of indulgence.
Everything feels balanced and, unexpectedly, very summery.
This is not your usual wintery Sunday roast
The cleverest thing about the Cafe Clement Sunday roast is that it doesn’t feel heavy.
There are no Yorkshire puddings or stuffing, both of which make a traditional Sunday roast feel like something best eaten in November before falling asleep under a blanket.
And weirdly, I don’t miss them in this rendition.
In fact, I don’t notice their absence until halfway through the meal, which says a lot.
This roast has a garden-fresh quality that makes it perfect for a warm day. The lamb, the peas, the chard, the leeks – everything feels lighter and greener than expected, without losing the comfort of a proper Sunday lunch.
That’s not easy to pull off.
The menu says the lamb comes with salsa verde, although ours never appears. I only remember this later when looking back at the menu, which perhaps proves it wasn’t essential. Still, it would have been a nice addition, especially with the lamb.
A small new-restaurant wobble, perhaps, but not enough to spoil the plate.
Dessert is where Cafe Clement loses a little momentum
By the time dessert rolls around, nothing on the menu is really calling to us.
There are tarts and a lemon meringue, but nothing that teases us into ordering it. So instead, we decide to share three scoops of gelato.
At first, we’re brought the wrong flavour, which is another small service slip. But it is corrected immediately, and we’re invited to keep the mistaken scoop of cherry gelato too.
A win.
The hazelnut praline gelato is easily the best of the bunch, being nutty, smooth and chocolate-adjacent in all the right ways. It has that Ferrero Rocher energy in the nicest way.
The mint chocolate chip is more interesting than expected. It’s not your usual toothpaste-green ice cream situation. Instead, it tastes properly botanical and herbaceous, like actual fresh mint. Running through it are crisp, delicate shards of chocolate stracciatella, which make every spoonful more pleasurable.
The custard gelato is also lovely. Cold, creamy and comforting in a very straightforward way.
The extra cherry gelato, however, is the weakest. I think I wanted the tartness of a cherry sorbet rather than the soft, slightly vague sweetness of a gelato. Next to the others, it feels a bit nondescript.
Service is friendly, but still settling in
Service is warm enough, and the restaurant is clearly working hard, but there are a couple of small slips with the missing salsa verde and the wrong gelato order.
It’s nothing dramatic, and the dessert issue is handled generously, but you can feel the restaurant is still settling into itself. It is new after all.
Still, the room is full, the food is mostly very good, and nobody seems remotely put off.
If anything, Cafe Clement already feels like a restaurant people have decided they want to like.
Final thoughts on Cafe Clement
I enjoyed Cafe Clement much more than I enjoyed getting to Cafe Clement.
The location feels a bit odd, the terrace doesn’t deliver the sunny riverside fantasy, and the dining room is darker than I expected. If you’re coming for a glowing outdoor lunch with a Thames view, you may be disappointed.
But if you’re coming for a very good Sunday roast, there is a lot to like.
The cheese souffle is excellent, the zucchini fritters are charming, and the lamb roast is one of the most elegant summer roasts I’ve had in London. I would have liked more lamb, and I would have liked the salsa verde to actually arrive, but the sides are so good that the meal still feels generous.
At around £70 per person, this is not a casual cheap Sunday lunch. But it does feel considered, seasonal and polished enough to justify the spend.
Cafe Clement may not have the view, but it does have the cooking.
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Cafe Clement restaurant review
Address – 180, The Thames, Ground Floor, St. Clement, 12 Temple Pl, London WC2R 2NF
Nearest Tube – Temple
