Sunday lunch at Orchard Road, The Seadog Hastings: review

On October 26, 2025 by The Plate Licked Clean

It’s the lamb which makes you sit back with a happy sigh.

That sultry tangle of braised shoulder, irreproachably tender, is aromatic. Sumptuous. It tells you you’re in the right place, at the right time, with the right order. It is, by any criteria worth using, an absolute minx of a thing.

But then so is the woman opposite me, and this is (yet another) part of her (not at all protracted, honestly) birthday celebrations, which is why I am here today. The long-suffering B has reminded me that we very rarely have a roast together, and has- with the subtlety of a velvet sledgehammer- dropped several hints that, as it’s her week, she would like to go for a roast, please and thank you very much.

She has a point: I rarely eat them. Blame my Spanish mother, I suppose, and the lack of formative hardwiring, and since then there’s always something else I prefer on Sundays, something else which ticks those sharing or family get-together boxes.

But then B can be very persuasive.

So here we are. And, as the man says,

Some things you do for money
And some you do for love love love

To repeat: she can be very persuasive. I can’t emphasise that enough.

This isn’t a random spin of the Hastings Roast Roulette wheel, though. It’s Orchard Road at The Seadog, the first place I ate in the town, and where I first suspected Hastings was going to be special. Before Tonka and Winifred’s and Lury and Sumisu and more, this was the one which had my antennae twitching.

Finding Rob Hills’ cooking, inspired by tales of his late mother’s upbringing and his subsequent travels, was an impressive introduction to the town. One bowl of his Singaporean cereal prawns and I was smitten. Well, two bowls, because you can’t have too much of a good thing, can you? Smitten, and intrigued: a pub opposite a train station, on the edge of the shopping precinct, is not the obvious place to find such accomplished South-East Asian cooking.

A distinctive in-house menu, an always-intriguing beer selection, and Scampi Flavour Fries. That’ll do me. The Seadog wears its maritime and Irish colours with pride, with Munster, Ulster and Leinster club rugby scarves and the national Tricolour on show alongside a photograph of Sinéad O’Connor, impishly beautiful in her ‘Irish Princess’ t-shirt. A ‘More dogs, more Irish, more pints‘ poster plays on the infamous boarding house signs, a timely reminder that bigotry always moves on to a new target eventually and that the next objects of discrimination and scorn are never far away. There’s a wall chart of maritime knots if you need help telling your splice from your knob, so to speak.

With Sunday lunch served until 7pm, you’ll find your two hour slot written on your table, and an inclusive menu which means children and vegans are looked after.

But we are here for the meats.

There’s a choice of four, which is going some from such a small kitchen.

But before that: even I, as a roast sceptic, know it’s All About The Gravy. However good the rest of the meal, it will fall at the first hurdle with underwhelming gravy.

Happily, it’s lovely. It tastes like time-consuming stuff, the sort of thing which feels like it has love poured in it. Well, love and booze- two bottles of port, I’m told, into a beef bone stock which has been simmering for hours, before being finished with roasted bone marrow for a burly richness and depth, and a glossy sheen Dulux would be proud of.

It’s more work than is necessary, when even Michelin-starred kitchens are buying their stock in ready-made. That’s some dedication to just one service a week. And yes, you get your own jug to pour even more as you go.

All meat comes from nearby Beak & Tail, which short of having your own herd is as cast-iron a seal of approval as it gets locally. Pork belly, served as what can only be called ‘a slab’, is impressive.

Crackling is king and this is impeccably done, It has been prepared in a similar way to siu yuk- Cantonese crispy pork belly- and cooked on the bone to keep it juicy. The underside and skin, already air-dried, is thoroughly pricked with a bespoke Chinese tenderiser – ‘Basically, nails in a wooden handle’, Rob laughs later- and rubbed all over with five-spice, salt and pepper and Shaoxing rice wine. The skin, heavily salted to draw out any moisture, is carefully dried. Then, into the oven: roasting at a lower temperature before getting a final blast at a higher one, to ensure that skin is perfect.

Salt, time, patience. It all pays off, handsomely, and on any other day it would be the standout.

But as I’m committing to the process, I’m having two meats. Which is where we came in, with that lamb, and that little tower of shoulder, braised into something quietly beautiful. Clearly, not all roasts are created equal.

Locally reared Romney Marsh lamb has had a long steep in stock and red wine, along with plenty of garlic and diced vegetables: once the meat is so tender the bones simply pull free, the flesh is shredded by hand so only the good stuff remains.

Then it’s time to mix that rich gravy through the mix to bind the meat, before it is rolled and wrapped into a sausage shape so it can be ‘set’ in the fridge. When you order, it is glazed in the oven with that lamb gravy.

It’s put-your-fork-down-and-take-a-moment good. And isn’t this why we come out to eat? For someone to go to far more trouble than we could ever be bothered with in our own kitchen- even if we had the skill or inclination- on our behalf? Someone to do all of that for us, and with such satisfying results, for just over twenty pounds?

It’s tempting to think the kitchen doesn’t need to go to these lengths. Rob Hills is making things hard for himself. Like the bao he makes every morning for the weekday menu. Or, y’know, you could just roast a leg of lamb and carve slices off it.

All of which is just cheffy overthinking unless you can taste the difference when it arrives in front of you.

The essentials of a roast are all present and correct. Towering Yorkshires, lightly puffed, and excellent rosemary-scented roast potatoes pass the tap test with aplomb. The sirloin, cured in a mixture of black treacle and salt overnight (£21.95) is a resounding hit with B. A huge serving of thick rosy pink slices, with the great ‘legs’ of well-raised beef, it has been cooked in a water bath to guarantee consistency throughout the joint.

Chef’s Asian obsession is never far away- you see it in the star anise used for the soft, subtly sweet carrots, and with the white miso and turmeric mixed with stoutly English cheeses which smother the richly savoury leeks, which you can equally imagine as perfect cold evening comfort eating. Clearly, not all roasts are created equal.

This is a Sunday lunch full of clever technique and cheffy know-how, but never takes itself too seriously or loses sight of the fact it’s a roast in a pub.

So, have I found the best roast in Hastings? In all of East Sussex? It’s a tongue in cheek question, the sort of query which inevitably fills Facebook local pages.

Honestly, I’ve no idea. I’m not qualified to tell you.

I can tell you why I have fallen in love with Hastings’ food. I can tell you why I was excited when Ben Cumberpatch opened Winifred’s with his distinctly English seasonal cooking. I can tell you why Kim Duke’s cooking at Tonka always makes me happy, or why Lury is the town’s first destination restaurant, or how coquina’s Mediterranean menu will brighten any day, or why cold ones have me daydreaming of comfort from Sumisu Ramen, or my go-to order at The Albion’s pasty shack (Sussex crab, with chilli jam, if you’re asking).

We could play Potato Top Trumps with Boatyard’s smoked eel hash brown and the pressed potato, tricked out with pickled mussels and drenched in truffled cream, from Winifred’s. If you like, I’ll even join you in a moment of silence for the late black cherry Negroni at Bat and Bee.

But ‘the best roast in the area’? Not a clue, though it’s hard to imagine it gets much better than this. There’s craft here. And really, given what we already know about what goes on here- why would I be surprised? There you go: I came here under the lightest of duress, I left a believer.

What Sunday lunch at The Seadog did give me was one happy birthday girl. Which is all that mattered. She won’t have to persuade me to come back.

Orchard Road, The Seadog, Hastings

Sunday lunch: 12-7

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