Bites: Host a roast with none of the hassle

If you're like us, summer doesn't mean the end of the hearty Sunday roast. It just means we're more likely to drift off to the garden or park and leave the washing-up till later (ugh). It's – still – the perfect time for friends and family to draw up a chair, have a proper catch-up and eat till they're fit to burst.

One of the best places to have the hard work taken out of the whole enterprise is the kookily named Paradise By Way of Kensal Green (blame GK Chesterton). This rangy gastropub (theparadise.co.uk) has been serving up roasts for ages, but now it offers "Host your own roast", where you can choose a chunk of meat – top-quality beef, lamb, chicken, suckling pig, goose or duck – and have it served with all the trimmings to you and up to 18 of your nearest and dearest in a private room. Best of all, the Paradise's chef, Tim Payne, comes tableside to carve. Then just walk away from the greasy plates for a game of Scrabble or a post-prandial snifter in the bar... Bliss.