I had never eaten a proper Sunday roast. Not once. For someone who has spent a considerable portion of his life eating things on purpose, this seemed like a fairly serious oversight.

So I decided to fix it.

A quick search led me to The Cheshire Cat in Carp, about a 30 minute drive from home. I enlisted a few friends because if I was going to finally eat a Sunday roast, I wanted witnesses. Or accomplices.

The pub is tucked away in Carp, just off the highway, in a setting that feels a world away from the city. It is not exactly where you expect to stumble upon a memorable meal, which made discovering one there all the more satisfying.

We started with drinks in the outdoor lounge before moving to the patio. September had begun making its presence known, so the overhead heaters and blankets were a nice touch. The place was bustling, but the staff never seemed rattled by it. The servers were funny, kind and attentive without hovering, a quality that should be easier to find than it is. They made us feel less like customers and more like people who had somehow been invited over for dinner and were now expected to eat everything.

Naturally, we needed starters.

My friends quickly agreed, although I suspect they realized there was no point trying to stop me.

The smokey mozza sticks, house made mozzarella with smokey ketchup and fresh Parmesan, were what mozzarella sticks should be when someone has actually thought about them. Hot, crisp and aggressively cheesy, with a smoky sauce that did more than simply carry the word “smokey” in its name.

Then came the stuffed jalapeños, bacon wrapped and filled with cream cheese, with bacon jam, maple syrup and balsamic reduction. Salty, sweet, spicy and sticky in exactly the right proportions. These were not appetizers so much as a carefully engineered attempt to make sure I was full before my actual dinner arrived.

I kept eating them anyway.

Then came the reason we had driven to Carp.

The Hot Beef & Yorkie: shaved Ontario AAA rib eye tucked into Yorkshire pudding, with horseradish mayo, roasted vegetables, gravy and mashed potatoes.

This was my first proper Sunday roast, so I had no childhood version to compare it with, no grandmother’s plate hovering in the background, no cherished family recipe against which to measure it. I had only the plate in front of me.

Fortunately, it made its own case.

The beef was tender enough that the knife seemed mostly decorative. The mashed potatoes were deeply creamy. The horseradish mayo supplied enough bite to wake everything up, while the Yorkshire pudding waited patiently for its true purpose: becoming a gravy delivery system.

And the gravy was worth delivering.

Nothing on the plate felt ornamental. The beef, potatoes, vegetables, Yorkshire pudding, gravy and horseradish all had a job, and they showed up for it. After a lifetime of somehow missing the Sunday roast, I finally understood why people make such a fuss about it.

I was completely full.

Which is when I ordered the sticky toffee pudding.

This is my favourite dessert, and apparently there are limits to how much a Sunday roast can interfere with that particular decision. Whiskey caramel sauce, a whiskey tuile and ice cream finished things off with the sort of excessive generosity that makes dessert feel less like a course and more like a final bad decision.

It was perfect.

Which is awkward for a column called The Best Thing I Ate This Month, because I’m supposed to pick one thing and move on with my life.

I can’t.

The mozzarella sticks were stupendous. The jalapeños were dangerously good. The roast was everything I had hoped a Sunday roast would be. And the sticky toffee pudding made a convincing argument against stopping when you are technically full.

So I’m not picking a winner.

The best thing I ate this month was the whole meal at The Cheshire Cat. The food was terrific, the setting was lovely and the staff made us feel completely at home. And then there were the friends I shared it with, people I love, which somehow made everything taste even better.

Weeks later, I’m still thinking about that Yorkshire pudding soaking up the last of the gravy, and the good company around the table, with nothing to do but eat, drink and laugh.

That’s a pretty good Sunday roast.