Food / 9 September, 2026 / Ellie Thompson

The Chalk Freehouse Chelsea: Sunday Lunch Goes To The Dogs

There aren’t many Sunday lunch invitations that specifically encourage you to bring the dogs, but frankly, I think there should be more.

So, on Sunday afternoon, we bundled Bowser, our black Labrador, and Paddy, our cream Cockapoo, onto the train and then a bus from Clapham (hello again, 319!) and headed for Chelsea to try The Dog’s Dinner at The Chalk Freehouse, a Sunday lunch where the four-legged members of the family are very much invited to the table.

And for me, walking through the door came with a rather unexpected dose of nostalgia.

From Saturday night karaoke to Sunday lunch with the dogs

Long before The Chalk Freehouse arrived, this little spot on Tryon Street was home to The Queen’s Head, a long-standing gay pub and the scene of some truly excellent Saturday night karaoke sessions in my younger years.

Yes, I had been here before. Many times. Although back then I was rather more likely to be clutching a microphone than two dog leads and the hand of a 9-year-old child. How times change!

Fast-forward more years than I care to count, and the place is completely unrecognisable. The Chalk opened in its current guise in 2025 and is part of the Tom Kerridge group, with chef Tom De Keyser at the helm. De Keyser spent more than a decade working alongside Kerridge, including heading up the kitchen at The Hand & Flowers.

The old pub has been completely transformed into a gorgeous, grown-up gastropub spread across two floors, but thankfully it hasn’t become so polished that you feel remotely uncomfortable arriving with a kid, a Labrador and a Cockapoo in tow.

In fact, quite the opposite.

Tom Kerridge’s Dog’s Dinner

The reason for our visit was The Dog’s Dinner, a brilliant family-fun Sunday offering created with Butternut Box, where dogs dining alongside their humans are treated to their very own complimentary Sunday roast.

Watching Bowser and Paddy clock that the food being carried towards our table was actually for them was possibly worth the trip into London alone. They don’t normally do lunch.

There’s something both amusing and rather wonderful about sitting in a beautiful Chelsea pub, glass of very expensive wine in hand, while your black Lab and Cockapoo tuck into Sunday lunch beside you.

Needless to say, neither required much encouragement. Paddy now appears to believe that Yorkshire puddings are a standard part of his weekend diet.

A cute doggy concept will only get you so far, though, and happily, The Chalk isn’t relying on novelty.

The food was top-notch

The kitchen focuses on seasonal British cooking, and Sunday is all about a proper roast, alongside starters, sides and the sort of puddings that make any previous intention to be restrained disappear fairly rapidly.

We went for the beef, while Maddie, our nine-year-old, bypassed the fairly limited children’s menu and ordered the adult pork roast. Everything was beautifully cooked, with proper roast potatoes, all the trimmings and exactly what you want from a Sunday lunch.

It’s worth having a look at the children’s menu before you go if you have a particularly fussy eater, but ordering from the main menu worked perfectly for us.

And the wine? Excellent. Although at Chelsea prices, you rather hope it will be. It’s the sort of Sunday lunch where one glass rather easily becomes another, and suddenly nobody is in quite such a hurry to leave.

Meanwhile, Bowser and Paddy were far too preoccupied with their own dinners to pay much attention to ours, which made a pleasant change.

Sunday Roast, Chelsea Style

The Chalk is a stone’s throw from the King’s Road, around an eight-minute walk from Sloane Square tube, and strikes that lovely balance between upmarket and relaxed. The staff are warm, dogs are genuinely welcomed rather than merely tolerated, and it feels special without being remotely stuffy. Quite the feat when one member of your party is liable to start sniffing under neighbouring tables.

It’s also perfectly placed for a wander around Chelsea before or after lunch. (And Sloane Square’s Zara is still the best Zara known to wo-man. Fact.)

The only catch? It’s spendy.

But c’mon. This is Chelsea, it’s part of the Tom Kerridge stable, and the food is operating several notches above your average pub lunch, so you’d be almost disappointed if it was cheap. It’s definitely more of a special Sunday lunch than an inexpensive local roast. Throw in a good bottle of wine, sides and pudding, and the bill can climb fairly enthusiastically.

That said, particularly when the dogs get to join in rather than stare accusingly at you as you leave the house, it’s a brilliantly fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon. For all the family. There were lots of kids there tucking into their grub.

There was also something comfortingly full-circle about returning to the site of some fairly questionable Saturday-night karaoke choices years later for a civilised lunch with Bowser and Paddy.

The building may have had one hell of a glow-up and, perhaps disappointingly, nobody handed me a microphone this time. But I’d happily go back, and not just for the nostalgia.

And the dogs? They’ve already awarded this gaff five stars.

Book The Chalk Freehouse

Address: The Chalk Freehouse, 27 Tryon Street, Chelsea, London SW3 3LG
Nearest tube: Sloane Square, around an eight-minute walk
Telephone: 020 3958 4444
Email: contact@thechalkfreehouse.co.uk

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