Gen Z Is Remixing the Sunday Roast With Hot Sauce and Kimchi

The Sunday roast is getting a glow-up, and Gen Z is holding the sauce bottle. A new survey of British diners has found that younger eaters are rewriting the rules of the traditional roast dinner, reaching for ketchup, hot sauce, chilli oil and even kimchi where gravy alone used to rule. The research, commissioned by hospitality technology company Lightspeed, suggests the meal is becoming less of a sacred ritual and more of a blank canvas for global flavours.

According to the findings, reported by Restaurant, more than one in four respondents said they or someone they know had added ketchup to a roast in the past year, while roughly one in six had reached for hot sauce and one in eight for chilli oil. Gen Z leads the experiment: 39 percent of young diners said they had added ketchup, nearly a quarter had opted for hot sauce, one in ten had folded in macaroni cheese and almost one in ten had added kimchi. In contrast, 40 percent of baby boomers said they would not change the classic combination of meat, potatoes, gravy and traditional trimmings for anything.

What the new-look Sunday roast actually looks like

The reinvented plate keeps its skeleton but swaps the condiments. Gravy still flows, but it now shares the table with sriracha, gochujang, chilli crisp and jars of fermented cabbage. The additions are not random: diners told the researchers they swap traditional accompaniments to eat more vegetables (35 percent), to make the meal healthier (34 percent) or to get more protein and fibre into the day. The remix culture that already shapes how Gen Z dresses and decorates is now showing up at the dinner table, where the Sunday roast is treated less like a museum piece and more like a playlist that can be shuffled.

London's diners push the trend furthest. According to the London Daily News, citing the same Lightspeed research, 37 percent of Londoners said they or someone they know had added ketchup to a roast in the past year, with hot sauce and chilli oil close behind, and nearly half said they routinely replace classic sides to eat healthier, add vegetables or boost protein and fibre. The capital's figures run ahead of the national averages on almost every measure of roast experimentation.

There is one line Gen Z will not cross

For all the rule-breaking, the Sunday roast has a red line: the roast potato. More than two-thirds of respondents insisted the crispy spud should never be changed or removed, making it the single most protected item on the plate. Beef remains the nation's favourite roast meat at just under a third of diners, ahead of chicken and lamb, and the average Briton has sat down to eleven Sunday roasts so far this year. The message is clear — reinvent the sauces, globalise the sides, but touch the roast potato at your peril.

The research also tracked how eating-out habits have shifted over the past decade, and the classic dinner sits inside a broader move toward adventurous ordering. Compared with 2016, diners are now more likely to order dishes built around British cheeses (four in ten), seasonal vegetables (a third) or hot honey (more than a quarter). The traditional plate is not dying; it is absorbing new influences the way every living food tradition does.

How to build your own Gen Z Sunday roast

Borrowing the playbook is simple, and it starts with one rule: change the seasoning, not the foundation. Keep the roasted meat, the potatoes and the Yorkshire pudding, then introduce one global element at a time. A drizzle of chilli crisp over the vegetables, a spoonful of kimchi on the side of the plate or a honey-and-gochujang glaze on the carrots gives the Sunday roast a new accent without losing its identity. Protein-forward eaters can lean into the trend the survey spotted by swapping a heavy side for charred greens or adding a legume-rich stuffing.

The trend also fits a wider appetite for remixing comfort food rather than abandoning it. For more on that instinct, see our look at the newstalgia food trend rebuilding childhood classics in 2026, and browse more cooking coverage on our cooking and recipes topic page. Whether the ketchup bottle stays on the table permanently is anyone's guess, but the Sunday roast has survived centuries of reinvention. This is just the latest one — and it tastes better than purists would admit.