Get Your 14-Bird Fix With 1 Lombard Street's Tudor Roast

1 Lombard Street

By Michael Parker

So the venues vying for the pound in your pocket are offering a Christmas lunch that promises to put your home-cooked turkey in the shade. It stands to reason that restaurants will make efforts to trump each other - and where else would this be taken to extremes than in the Square Mile where competition and extravagance is a way of life: 1 Lombard Street, a restaurant a mere stone's throw from the Bank of England in a Grade II listed Regency former bank building, is offering a Tudor roast.

For the uninitiated, that's fourteen different birds stuffed one inside the other, starting with a quail stuffed inside a squab pigeon and progressing through teal, wood pigeon, French partridge, mallard, woodcock, guinea fowl, pheasant, Barbary duck, Aylesbury duck, peacock and a wild American turkey - all stuffed into a goose. Less dog eat dog and more bird eat bird, this epic feast bearing the family name of that notorious fat man himself, Henry VIII, comes with seasonal greens and vegetables for £995, feeds 20 to 25 people and must be ordered a week in advance.