Ruby-red blackthorn liqueur, seaweed-flecked sourdough and stuffed roast mallard are on the menu in this coastal county
Food and travel writer Clare Hargreaves takes us on a virtual foodie road trip through Kent, stopping off at country pubs, smokehouses and cheesemakers. Looking for more places to visit in Kent? Read our foodie guide to Margate here Many of us take the frothy white blossoms of the blackthorn tree as a sign that spring has finally sprung. But for forager Miles Irving, the thorny leaf shoots that follow are even more exciting. He gathers them from Kentish hedgerows for customers, some of whom blend the leaves with red wine and brandy to create épine (thorn) aperitif, a drink that hails from France. The ruby-red liquor tasted, surprisingly, of of almond, as I discover when I join the locals (and resident cat Monty) at the bar of The Red Lion in Stodmarsh, a traditional clapboard building buried among the lanes of north-east Kent. The only passing traffic is wellied walkers visiting the neighbouring nature reserve. “You only come here if you want to be here, or you’re lost,” says front-of-house Mark Winstone. Bottles of épine join the rainbow of homemade infusions that line the bar’s shelves. There’s vodka infused with watermint (an edible plant found in streams), horseradish gin (used in the pub’s bloody mary, alongside foraged wild celery) and spirits flavoured with anything from moss to porcini and wild passion fruit. As I sip my aperitif, its subtle almond flavours remind me of amaretto – this is the homemade, Kentish, version. Épine is just one of many collaborations between Miles, who’s been foraging professionally for nearly two decades, and The Red Lion’s chefs, Morgan Lewis and John Young. This is a pub that’s always had a reputation for being eccentric. But now, thanks to enthusiastic chefs and a wild larder, its eccentricity has an off-the-wall flavour – nothing is ordinary here. Wood ants that taste of balsamic vinegar give an acidic crunch to salads, Whitstable oysters come with seaside succulents, and if you order a dirty martini it will be made not with olive brine, but with gin infused with wild sea greens. I kick off my dinner with a poached duck egg ringed with foraged sea cabbage, and marble-sized sprouting bulbs of three-cornered leek that add a garlicky sweetness. “I’d stored the bulbs to plant, but discovered they’d sprouted…so I decided to use them in a dish,” smiles Morgan. The Red Lion’s position at the heart of Kent’s eastern nose means it draws on coast and woodland alike. At Swalecliffe, near Whitstable, I meet Miles’s picking manager, Fred Rother, who swapped his drumsticks (Fred used to play in the rock band, Syd Arthur) for a forager’s knife after developing hearing problems. An icy wind gnaws our bones as we crouch on the shingle, but Fred seems unperturbed as he gathers glossy green sea beet. “At home I cook beet like spinach – it’s great in a saag aloo,” he says. Later, I scour the woods around Stodmarsh for winter chanterelles with Nick Robinson, who, when he’s not supplying The Red Lion, runs mushroom foraging courses from his Oast Smokehouse in Sandwich. In spring the search begins for his holy grail: honeycomb-fleshed morels. “They’re sublime in a poulet aux morilles [chicken breast with morels],” he says, grinning through his handlebar moustache. There’s plenty of fish, fruit and game here, too. Dover sole, sea bass and skate are landed at the tiny port at Broadstairs, and delivered to the pub by Chapman’s fishmongers. In autumn, Miles and Fred forage for citrussy sea buckthorn berries and medlars that, when left to rot or ‘blet’, turn gooey. Then, in winter, game arrives as and when it’s been shot. I also notice a brace of mallards being presented to The Red Lion’s kitchen, by Stour Valley Game’s owner Daran Byrom – they’ll be cooked for the pub’s Sunday roast. The birds are later stuffed with foraged treasures and served with a zingy pickled walnut relish, made from walnuts grown in St Mary’s Platt (west Kent), where I meet grower Alexander Hunt. “To pickle walnuts, you pick the nuts green, around late June, before a shell has started to form,” he says as we tour the walnut groves behind his cottage. “My family always ate pickled walnuts with cheese and cold meat.” With just eight acres of trees, Alexander is one of only a handful of people cultivating walnuts in the UK. “Squirrels make it notoriously difficult, which is why we like selling the walnuts green,” he says. Luckily it’s a growing market, with green walnuts demanded both by makers of preserves and bitters, and by companies manufacturing dyes. As for the pub’s dairy produce – including creamy milk, and primrose-yellow cream so thick you can stand a spoon in it – much of that comes from the pedigree Guernsey cows at Hinxden Farm, also in west Kent. What John and Morgan don’t use in indulgent desserts (including juniper and marshmallow chocolate sponge) they churn into butter, which is delicious slathered over sourdough bread made from flour stone-ground at Eckley Farm outside Staplehurst. As you’d expect, sourdough at The Red Lion is far from ordinary – local seaweeds, herbs or chanterelles are thrown in for extra flavour. If you fancy something to accompany your épine, there’s Ancient Ashmore cheese from Jane Bowyer at Cheesemakers of Canterbury. The cheddar-style hard cheese is crafted by hand to an old smallholder’s recipe, using unpasteurised milk from two local dairy farms. Cheeses are left to mature on pine shelves in the dairy’s maturing room, and are continually turned and rubbed to ensure an even spread of rind mould. Bowyer’s Farmhouse and Ancient Ashmore are well known cheeses, but The Red Lion serves Jane’s 24-month-aged Top Shelf vintage version – it’s as caramel-y, crystalline and crumbly as an aged gouda. Pair it with a slice of sourdough and a chunk of the house plumbrillo, and you’ll make even the fussiest ploughman happy. Of course, this corner of Kent doesn’t have a monopoly on great local food. Over in the west, Will Devlin, chef-owner of The Small Holding in Kilndown, is launching farm and forage days this May, to cater for a surge of interest in the produce he uses. Starting with coffee and homemade pastries at the restaurant, the experience will include touring Will’s smallholding before heading out to forage further afield (dandelions and wild garlic in spring; elderflowers and wild strawberries in early summer; and damsons, sloes and cobnuts in autumn). Finally, guests enjoy a seasonal tasting menu that might include hogget with fennel and chilli; and strawberry with basil and elderflower. In the county’s northern reaches, the Isle of Sheppey, I meet two more entrepreneurs just as enthusiastic about Kent’s varied larder. Georgina and Gareth Fulton accommodate guests in modernist-style shepherd’s huts on their 3,300-acre Elmley nature reserve (read our full review of Elmley here). After a night snuggled under luxury bed linen and Romney Marsh Wools blankets, you wake up to scarlet sunrises illuminating Elmley’s vast marshland wilderness and, if you’re lucky, barn owls flying off to find breakfast. Fortunately, guests don’t have to hunt for their food, if they opt for Elmley’s food-delivery service. Brought in wicker hampers to your hut, a thoughtfully chosen range of local foods is mostly sourced from Macknade’s state-of-the-art foodhall in nearby Faversham. A breakfast bircher muesli made using local Duskin apple juice kicks off the day nicely, while a pie made from Kentish pasture-fed beef makes for a satisfying supper. But the highlight is a terrific dahl, peppered with carrot and courgette, which arrives with a side platter of rosy-hued pickled radishes at lunchtime. It’s made by Katy Newton as part of her Wasted Kitchen business, which turns spoiled or surplus fruit and vegetables (mainly from Macknade but also from local farmers) into delicious ready meals, dips and pickles. Equally full of flavour is her fragrant orange and almond cake, served in Elmley’s magnificent American-style barn for afternoon tea. Enjoy this from the comfort of a slouchy sofa strewn with rugs and hot-water bottles. The cake is made with oranges and cloves previously used to concoct a spiced Kentish damson shrub, part of Katy’s Coxy’s drinks brand that’s on sale in the barn’s honesty bar. As in so much of this food-loving county, nothing is ordinary here. For more information see visitkent.co.uk or follow #oliveeatskent. Follow Clare @larderloutUK Words and photographs by Clare Hargreaves, top image by Getty
Locally grown yuzu, new-wave ciders and caramelised goat’s cheese are just some of the culinary surprises hidden in this region’s rolling hills and beech woods
Looking for pubs in Sussex? Want to know what to eat in the South East region? Food and travel writer Clare Hargreaves takes us on a foodie road trip though Sussex, stopping off at dairy farms, microbreweries and gastro pubs. They’re rebellious, inquisitive, sometimes bolshy and their pet hate is fresh air. No, not your stereotypical teenager but the 220 coffee-and-cream milking goats belonging to Kevin and Alison Blunt of Greenacres Farm in East Sussex. Neither of the Blunts hail from a farming family – he trained as a biochemist, she as a nurse – but in the late 1980s the couple decided to apply their expertise to a different science: making an exquisite soft mould-ripened goat’s cheese, which they christened Golden Cross after their hamlet. I meet the Blunts on their six-acre farm, north of Eastbourne. Kevin is herding the goats from their straw-bedded barns out into the fields, where they make a beeline for the hawthorn hedges. “Goats are browsers not grazers so they find hedges a lot more interesting than grass,” says Kevin. “They hate the wet and cold, so after a few minutes outside they’re usually asking to go back in.” In the dairy, Alison and son Matthew ladle raw goat’s milk curds into log-shaped moulds, following a recipe bequeathed to them by a French cheesemaker. Once salted and dried, the cheese logs are dusted with charcoal, which creates a pleasing border between the pure white cheese inside and the velvety penicillium mould enveloping it. Golden Cross is not just making awards judges and cheese-lovers happy but also local chefs. One of them, Matt Gillan, has just set up shop in nearby Slaugham (pronounced Slaffam) following a successful crowdfunding campaign. Previously head chef at The Pass at South Lodge hotel, near Horsham, where he won a Michelin star, Gillan’s latest venture is Heritage, a gastro-pub-with-rooms hidden among the thick beech woods of the High Weald, West Sussex. Matt is best known for goat’s meat rather than cheese, having featured the meat in his winning dish on Great British Menu in 2015. But he’s smitten by Kevin and Alison’s goat’s cheese, which for one of his starters he whips up into a mousse and partners with discs of raw, earthy beetroot, a dollop of beetroot sorbet and ruby pearls of raspberry vinegar. “It’s hard to find a goat’s cheese that isn’t either young and citrussy, or pungent and farmyardy, but Golden Cross is bang in the middle,” says Matt. “It’s fresh, but not too fresh, and it’s robust enough to stand up to other ingredients. It’s one of the few British goat’s cheeses I really like.” Matt also uses the cheese in a ‘cheeseboard’ dish that substitutes the usual mixed platter for a serving of Golden Cross that’s sprinkled with demerara then grilled to make a sort of fromage brûlée, and paired with cubes of pickled Bramley apple and fuschia-edged coins of radish. Matt hit lucky with vegetables, too. South of Slaugham, in a dip in the South Downs near the market town of Lewes, Robin Williams and his Japanese wife, Ikuko Suzuki, are growing mainly Japanese vegetables and herbs according to the principles of what they call “natural agriculture” – which broadly means using careful inter-planting to pull in native predators and parasites instead of deploying artificial fertilisers or pesticides. “We grow the majority of our crops outside for nutrition and flavour,” says Robin. “Although our slow-grow methods mean a shorter growing season, they also concentrate their taste.” Chefs at restaurants ranging from Heritage to London’s The Ledbury, Koya and Lyle’s are all regular customers of NamaYasai, which translates as ‘raw’ and ‘vegetable’. I ask Robin if I can watch his crops being harvested. “Sure, just get here at one,” he says. I’m a little surprised that harvesting starts so late in the day but he means 1am (ensuring customers receive produce that is only two to 12 hours from being picked). So I twist through ink-black country lanes, then bump up a track into the woods to find his young balaclava-clad team harvesting NamaYasai’s fields by headtorch. It’s eerily quiet as each gets on with the job in hand – wresting pink or white daikons (Asian radishes) from their beds of soft Sussex earth, or plucking armfuls of zig-zag-leafed shiso. Inside coriander-fragrant greenhouses, I spy Japanese aubergines, delicate ruby chard seedlings, and spiky bitter melons that look like reptiles. As a blood-orange sun peeks over the distant chalky rump of the South Downs, the picking ends and the task of loading the vegetables onto vans begins. The produce hits restaurants a few hours later, ensuring it’s as squeakily fresh as possible. Since 2016 NamaYasai has also been producing the Japanese citrus fruit yuzu, another of Matt’s favourites – you’ll find a yuzu syrup giving an exotic citrussy kick to a caramel parfait and bay leaf ice cream on his tasting menus. There’s fruit of a more conventional kind at Old Mill Farm, near Bolney, where Glyn Stephens has been growing apples for nearly 40 years. In the 1990s British apple growers were struggling to compete with the cheap foreign imports flooding supermarket shelves, so the Stephens needed to diversify. Glyn’s son Tom, then at university, decided juicing was the way ahead. “It was sell up or juice, so I decided to give it a go,” says Tom, as he shows me his orchards of Discoveries, views of the South Downs’ Devil’s Dyke in the distance. Under the name of Wobblegate, he now supplies cafés, restaurants and bars across the UK. Matt, who’s known Tom since his South Lodge days, is an enthusiastic customer, serving Wobblegate juice in Heritage’s bar, pairing it with pumpkin-spiced Aluna coconut rum in a cocktail; and using it in desserts such as apple terrine, a refined version of tarte tatin that comes with a grass-green Wobblegate sorbet. Not content with producing simple fruit juice, Tom is now branching into ciders, which he serves along with other local artisan fermentations in his farm-based taproom. His sparkling Rebel Root Obsession, modelled on the dry, high-acidity ciders of the US, and his 2017-vintage still Rebel Root Outcider, made just from Bramleys (“something we were told couldn’t be done”), are both winners. He’s also joining forces with local vineyards to produce a wine-cider fusion that he hopes will take his cider to another level. For now, though, it’s just Tom’s sparkling Eden cider that’s on the pump at Heritage’s bar. It’s in good company, served alongside aptly-named Heritage ale made by Horsham’s Firebird microbrewery to a recipe from co-owner Bill King’s great-great-granddad, and sparkling wine produced by the Goring family from champagne grapes on their tiny Wiston vineyard down near Washington. I try the latter in Heritage’s Forest Fizz cocktail, blended with a homemade roasted chestnut and cherry shrub, and Æcorn Aperitif’s non-alcoholic acorn-based aperitif. Earthy and subtly sweet, with hints of winter spices, it’s the perfect preamble to my lunch of venison loin – pink, soft as butter, and paired with a pastilla parcel filled with the haunch. The meat comes with an array of bitter-sweet accompaniments: frondy enoki mushroom, slightly otherworldly and pleasingly crunchy; blobs of divine chicory caramel; and translucent tangles of pickled turnip. It’s all held together by a dainty dribble of lemony sour-cherry sauce that’s flecked with cocoa nibs – intriguing, but it works. The venison (fallow and roe), culled from large estates and parks along the South Downs by Jack Smallman, has a subtle flavour that’s revealed rather than disguised by Matt’s unusual additions. But Heritage’s must-try dish, The Herder, is, unsurprisingly, based around goat meat – meat from billy kids born to dairy goats that would otherwise be slaughtered and wasted – from stuffed loin to salt-baked leg, barbecued shoulder and herder pie. The dish even includes goat-fat dumplings. Matt’s mother was from St Helena and regularly cooked goat at home, so the dish proudly celebrates his personal heritage. Words and photographs by Clare Hargreaves For more info, see experiencewestsussex.com
Northern Scottish Highlands foodie guide: where locals eat and drink
Sutherland might be one of the wildest and most remote corners of the British Isles, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find exciting, unexpected places to eat and drink there
Looking for restaurants in the Scottish Highlands? Want to know where to eat in Sutherland? Food and travel writer Clare Hargreaves shares here insider tips for the best restaurants, along with where to find bowls of mussels, mugs of marshmallow-topped hot chocolate and jars of rhubarb jam. Want to enjoy a taste of Scottish botanicals at home? Try one of our favourite Scottish gins here... olive’s must-visits for foodies in Sutherland West Coast Deli, Ullapool – best deli Cradled by mountains, and on the shore of Loch Broom, Ullapool is the northwest coast’s main hub. So before heading to remote Sutherland, our advice is to do a big shop at this well-stocked deli/café. Its impressive range of Scottish cheese includes Errington’s Lanark Blue, made from unpasteurised milk from the farm’s own Lacaune ewes, and both the heather honey and Arran wholegrain mustard dressing come from Saladworx in Dornoch, on Sutherland’s east coast. If the weather is fine, enjoy a cup of Matthew Algie coffee on the terrace outside. westcoastdeli.co.uk Elphin – best weekly market Blink and you could miss this cluster of houses on the scenic route between Ullapool and Lochinver. On Wednesdays, however, Elphin’s village hall buzzes with a food and crafts market. The cured meats on the Highland Charcuterie stall are all sourced from local estates or farms, and many of them are rare-breed – don’t miss the wild highland venison salami, flavoured with local blackcurrants and bog myrtle, and the bite-sized “walking sticks” (a great hiking snack), made from free-range Elphin-reared pork and pepper dulse seaweed. On the same stall you’ll also find local chanterelles, bog myrtle, seaweed and wild garlic, all of which are foraged from the surrounding mountains, woods and shores. Climb the track opposite to Elphin’s tea rooms, for homemade cake (try a slice of lime polenta) and views of the mighty Suilven mountain. facebook.com/Elphin-Market Summer Isles Hotel, Achiltibuie – best for views Choose between the airy dining room or no-frills bar (where the locals drink) at the Summer Isles Hotel. Wherever you eat, the views across to the Summer Isles from this old-timer hotel in beachside Achiltibuie are mesmerising – make sure you stay a while after dinner, for the sunset. As you’d expect, seafood dominates the menu, so get your hands messy with a bowl of mussels or battered haddock and chips in the bar. At the more formal restaurant, feast on dishes such as bourride of hake, mussels and scallops in a smoky broth. summerisleshotel.co.uk Choc-O-Latté, Point of Stoer – best for patisserie Most visitors beat a path to Sutherland’s rocky Point of Stoer to peer at its lighthouse, 200-foot-high Old Man of Stoer sea stack and the chance to spot whales and dolphins. For foodies, there’s another draw, in the shape of Choc-O-Latté. Belgian owners Philip Dendale and Sophie Van Oyenbrugge moved here in 2016 to set up a B&B (called Philosophy, an amalgamation of their names), and now they’ve added a tiny café to the business that revolves around Belgian chocolate. Transport yourself to a Brussels salon de thé with a mug of real hot chocolate (the special comes with added cream and mini marshmallows), a chocolate merveilleux (or ‘marvie’ as the locals call it), or a slab of Sophie’s ganache-topped chocolate cake. It’s all served on vintage china that’s been foraged from local junk shops or been donated by locals, and the view includes sheep-studded fields and Suilven mountain. bnbphilosophy.com The Jammery, Point of Stoer – best for jam The Jammery, housed in a cabin in the hamlet of Culkein, is another good reason to venture onto this wind-blasted promontory. Steve and Amanda Webb, who moved here from Bedfordshire in 2010, bake fresh cakes daily (we loved their cappuccino Victoria sponge) and, occasionally, made-from-scratch bread. The latter can be hard to buy in these parts, so snap up one of their loaves or filled rolls to fuel your coastal hike. The pair are actually best known for their jams made from local ingredients, including plum, raspberry, apple and Culkein-grown rhubarb. There’s also a range of chutneys and jellies, including a rowan jelly that’s perfect with venison, and tablet (the Scottish answer to fudge). On Monday and Wednesday evenings between June and August they also bake pizzas to take away. jammery.co.uk Kylesku Hotel – best for sustainable seafood With its dreamy location at the mouth of three lochs, seafood is naturally the order of the day at this friendly family-run hotel and restaurant. Owners Tanja Lister and Sonia Virechauveix go to great lengths to ensure that all their produce, including seafood, is responsibly sourced. Lunch might include a bowl of mussels from Loch Glendhu, and kedgeree topped with local hand-dived scallops. Or shell your way through a vibrant platter of creel-caught langoustines, crabs and lobsters landed by Kylesku boys Darren and Callum, who work out on the loch or jetty as you eat. Meat is free-range and sourced from local crofts. kyleskuhotel.co.uk Shorehouse restaurant, Tarbet – best seafood restaurant for bird-spotting There can’t be many restaurants with a view of the bay your seafood was caught in plus (if it’s the right season) guillemots and puffins. This modest shack-style eatery perches on rocks above the ferry jetty for Handa Island, an outcrop famous for the sea birds that nest on its ragged red sandstone crags. Shorehouse has been in the same family ever since it opened in 1977, serving seafood caught from their own boat. It’s simply prepared and presented, mainly as salads or sandwiches, and you can’t fault it for freshness. shorehousetarbet.co.uk Mackays, Durness – best breakfast If it isn’t local, homemade and delicious, it isn’t on the breakfast menu at this cabin-style B&B, which sits at the entrance to Durness, on Scotland’s wild north coast. Owner Fiona Mackay cooks eggs (from village hens) as you like them, tattie scones, local sausages and dry-cured bacon for guests every morning. But her organic porridge – topped with fruit, seeds, bee pollen and home-produced honey – is our must-order, as is the compote of garden-grown rhubarb that comes with homemade yogurt and cake. If you can fit it in, there’s homemade sourdough and raspberry jam too, all served with enthusiasm by Spanish-born waiter, Paco Colomina. visitdurness.com Cocoa Mountain, Balnakeil village, near Durness – best for hot chocolate A disused 1950s MOD station just opposite Cape Wrath is an unlikely place to find some of Scotland’s best chocolate. But a Cocoa Mountain beverage is just the thing after a bracing walk along the wind-blasted coast of Britain’s most northwesterly point. The Cold War station has been converted into a community of artists and food producers called Balnakeil village, and Paul Maden and James Findlay, both former academics in Glasgow, set up Cocoa Mountain here in 2006. As well as hot chocolate (which you can also buy in powdered form to take home), the pair make chocolate truffles using as many local ingredients as they can find, from raspberries and strawberries to fresh cream and crème fraîche. The bestseller, though, is their chilli and lemongrass flavour. cocoamountain.co.uk Smoo Lodge, Durness – best for Asian cooking At this newly refurbished beachside B&B, you’re more likely to find kimchi and sushi than black pudding and tatties. Korean ex-fashion designer Kyunghee Hendy-Cho runs it with her photographer husband Merlin Hendy. She cooks authentic Korean dinners such as seafood pancakes and bibimbap, a combination of tender marinated Highland beef, vegetables, sushi rice and gochujang hot red pepper paste. You end on a Scottish note, with a cranachan of local raspberries and toasted oatmeal steeped in honey and single malt whisky. Make Kyunghee’s homemade kimchi part of your breakfast – it’s great fuel for a wilderness walk, swim, or visit to the nearby Smoo caves. smoolodge.co.uk Côte du Nord, Kirtomy, near Bettyhill – best for gourmet dining In Kirtomy, a hamlet halfway between Cape Wrath and Thurso, family doctor Chris Duckham (a MasterChef contestant, back in 1992) devotes his Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings to cooking immaculate feasts. Chris’ 10-course tasting menu, served in the front room of his house, features produce such as lobster, langoustine and garden vegetables, alongside foraged ingredients including bog myrtle, wild thyme and sea lettuce. We loved the tian of crab, avocado and apple, with its crowning tomato purée discs, and the Scotch duck egg deep-fried in pork crumbs. cotedunord.co.uk Clare stayed at Smoo Lodge, formerly an 18th-century sporting lodge, on Durness’ seafront. It has four stylishly comfortable en-suite bedrooms; smoolodge.co.uk Words and images by Clare Hargreaves
Foodie road trip in the North York Moors
This pretty North Yorkshire market town is home to a raft of small food producers, the revamped coaching inn at its heart shining a spotlight on local herb-fed chicken, mellow nutty cheeses and rhubarb and raspberry gin
Looking for restaurants in Yorkshire? Want to know where to eat in Malton? Food and travel writer Clare Hargreaves takes us on a foodie road trip through Malton, stopping off at herb-fed chicken farms, coaching inns and artisan coffee roasters. As I watch Yorkshire farmer Ed Wilkinson’s clutch of birds pecking at fragrant fronds, I wonder if this is the sweetest-smelling chicken farm in Britain. Ed believes his free-range chickens are also among the tastiest in Britain, thanks to their special diet of herbs. It started by accident. Ed trained as a chartered surveyor but, after a stint in London, the stone-walled fields of his native Yorkshire beckoned, so he returned to the family farm near Thirsk to raise turkeys and chickens. His aunt, meanwhile, had set up a herb-growing business and Ed noticed that the eggs produced by her chickens, fed on the waste herbs, were exceptionally flavoursome. He wondered how poultry fed on herbs would taste, so gave it a try. “Birds are inquisitive and, as soon as they saw the herbs, went for them,” says Ed. Like the rest of us, though, they have their dietary preferences. They prefer soft, aromatic herbs such as coriander and basil, both on the menu on the morning I visit Herb Fed. “They’re less partial to hard herbs, and they won’t touch sage,” says Ed. “The herbs give an incredible depth of flavour.” Diet is equally important for the 35-odd butterscotch cows grazing the buttercupstudded meadows around Botton Creamery in Danby Dale, beneath the heather-clad rumps of the North York Moors. Most British dairy herds are Friesian, but here the cows are Dairy Shorthorns, native to this region, and their rich, unpasteurised milk is being turned into exquisite cheeses right on the bucolic farm itself. Botton’s standout cheese is Dale End, a tangy cheddar that can rival any of its better-known Somerset equivalents. The work of ‘cheddaring’ and pressing the cheeses into cloth-lined moulds is orchestrated by Alastair Pearson, aided by residents of the Camphill Community, which supports people with learning difficulties and mental health issues. Each team member has a task, whether it’s milking the cows, washing the cheeses or cleaning equipment. If some of the other cheeses have a continental feel about them it’s because Alastair learned his craft in Germany. His Summer Fields, made to a Swiss recipe, is mellow and nutty, almost fudgy like a mature gruyère. There’s Moorland Tomme and Yorkshire gouda, too. With such outstanding produce on the doorstep, it’s no surprise that, when I head south across the Moors to the newly revamped Talbot Inn, just off Malton’s pretty market square, I find both Herb Fed chicken and Dale End cheddar on the menu. They sit alongside other local supplies, from honey from hives in the garden, to just-caught Whitby crab and hogget from Malton butcher Food 2 Remember. Chef Robert Brittain’s style is to let ingredients speak for themselves, so Ed’s chicken is simply spatchcocked and served with a herb mayonnaise and hand-cut chips or – appropriately, given its diet – over a basil-fragrant pistou soup. And Botton’s cheddar gives a flavoursome punch to the signature twice-baked Dale End cheddar soufflé. The inn’s décor is equally relaxed, in a glamorous, playful sort of way. Ex-Lucky Onion stalwarts, Georgie and Sam Pearman, spruced up the 26-bedroomed Talbot earlier this year, bringing a modern style to the imposing 17th-century coaching inn. The sedate, white-tableclothed restaurant has been replaced by oak-floored rooms where modern art and antique finds rub alongside ancestral portraits. Eating is when and where you want. Already savoured the views of the watermeadows from the plant-draped Garden Room? Curl up by the log fires in the Snug, or slouch into a leather armchair beneath the wall-mounted wild boar in the navy-walled Upper Bar. Wherever you sit, jeaned and Converse-sneakered waiting staff miraculously appear. The inn’s transformation goes hand in hand with the drive by owner Tom Naylor-Leyland to turn Malton into Yorkshire’s foodie capital. It’s working: over the past four years, an impressive 26 food and drink businesses have set up shop in and around the town, and you can meet the region’s food producers at Malton’s annual food festival and monthly food market. Penetrate its narrow brick lanes and you’ll even find the Malton Cookery School and the Brass Castle micro-brewery: try its citrussy Sunshine pale ale in its streetside taproom or head back to the Talbot’s bar to order a pint of its malty Northern Blonde. “Malton was facing the challenges that so many market towns faced, like out-of-town shopping and the rise of internet shopping. We had empty shops,” says Tom. “I was in London’s Borough Market and saw Yorkshire produce being celebrated, so I thought, why can’t that produce be celebrated in Yorkshire itself?” Thanks to Tom’s efforts, the town’s red-bricked Talbot Yard, which once stabled horses while their owners were victualled at the inn opposite, now accommodates several thriving food businesses. These include an artisan roaster, Roost, and the Bluebird Bakery, run by Nicky and Al Kippax. The Kippax’s tiny Malton outlet may be little more than a multi-tiered trolley but the joy of it is that you can watch the bakers shaping their dough in the kitchen behind as you buy. And the cream-hued flour the bakery uses is grown by local farmers and milled by Philip Trevelyan on the fringes of the North York Moors National Park. I eat Bluebird’s sourdough toasted for lunch at The Talbot, topped with pork terrine and a dollop of chutney made from local sloes by Sloemotion. Come evening, I join locals, hotel guests and their dogs around the fire in The Talbot’s vaulted lower bar, where bar manager David Jhugroo dispenses a range of local drinks against a backdrop of stuffed gamebirds. In the non-alcoholic department, it’s hard to beat the apple juice pressed by Cameron Smith inside the remains of a 12th-century manor in the village of Husthwaite, due west. An amateur historian, Cameron discovered that for the past three centuries Husthwaite’s fertile soils and microclimate had made it famous for fruit growing (the village even supplied Captain Cook). Sadly its fruitful industry ground to a halt when the 60s Beeching cuts closed the railway line that took the fruit to market, and its orchards fell into neglect. Then, a decade ago, with the help of grant funding, Cameron persuaded the village to replant its orchards to how they’d been in 1856. Today Husthwaite is again the ‘Orchard Village’ it traditionally was, producing a not-too-sweet apple juice, as well as three very drinkable ciders. There’s more apple action in the gardens around Malton, where fruits are being harnessed by university professors Alan and Kathryn Murray, property developer James Cleary and assorted family and friends, to make Malton Cider. “We had two apple trees in our garden, James had a cider press and scratter, so we said, let’s have a go,” Alan tells me. The cider started off being just for friends, then extended to community pressings. Eventually, the group started flavouring it with Yorkshire’s most iconic crop, rhubarb, which happily also flourished in the Murrays’ garden. Rhubarb from Yorkshire’s Rhubarb Triangle is also celebrated in a host of gins and liqueurs, the standout being the delicately blushing Hedgerow Gin made by Sloemotion. Conservationist-cum-businessman Joff Curtoys, who crafts it, actually started (more than a decade ago) by making sloe gin liqueur as a way of saving North Yorkshire’s hedgerows and their wildlife. “By buying sloes from farmers we gave them a reason to hang on to their hedges,” Joff tells me. “Yellowhammers and buntings flourished.” Spotting the gin craze, in 2017 Joff returned to the hedges, this time to gather botanicals for a distilled Hedgerow Gin. Last year he launched a rhubarb and raspberry version – now his bestseller – that includes Timperley Early cultivated by John Dobson in the heart of the Rhubarb Triangle. At the Talbot Bar, I try a combo of Joff’s new gin with fresh raspberries, lemon juice and soda. Unlike so many rhubarb gins, it’s dry and tangy, not syrupy sweet. If quaffing this helps save Yorkshire’s birds and bees, I might just have to force down another. Words and photographs by Clare Hargreaves, May 2019 Follow Clare on Instagram @larderloutUK
Foodie road trip in The Severn and Wye valleys
These two mighty rivers, River Severn and River Wye, and their fertile valley, woods and orchards produce everything from eels and salmon to apples, cheeses and wild boar
Looking for places to eat in Monmouth and in the nearby Severn and Wye Valleys? Head on a foodie road trip through the Wye Valley area of outstanding natural beauty, stopping off in towns and villages including Newnham-on-Severn, Awre, Whitebrook and Monmouth... Where to eat and drink in Monmouth A border town, on the crossing of the Wye and the Monnow, Monmouth has recently upped its gastronomic game. In pretty, pedestrianised Church Street, for instance, Munday & Jones greengrocers (mundayandjonesmonmouth.co.uk) has been joined by #7 Church Street (numbersevenchurchstreet.co.uk), a café-restaurant owned by Roux-trained Mark Turton, former head chef at The Whitebrook, whose gutsy pulled beef main and buttermilk panna cotta dessert hit the spot; and nearby is Madeleine’s (madeleinesbakery.co.uk), a dinky artisan bakery run by illustrator-turned-baker Dilly Boase (yes, her repertoire includes Proust’s favourite sponge cakes, too). In Monmouth Priory, another sourdough supremo, cookery tutor Katherine Marland (katherskitchen.co.uk), hosts a fortnightly cooking club. And down the road you’ll find all things honey-related at the charity-run Bees for Development shop (beesfordevelopment.org). Monmouth’s main drag, Monnow Street, is home to two more foodie stalwarts, Fingal-Rock (pinotnoir.co.uk) wine merchants and Salt & Pepper kitchen shop (saltandpepper.co.uk) whose upstairs café does brilliant cakes, plus ice cream made in the valley by Brooke’s Dairy (brookesdairy.com), using milk and cream from their pedigree Jersey cows (Welsh Gold honeycomb is my winner). Other must-visits include Monteas (monteas.co.uk), for over 80 loose-leaf teas, and The Marches Deli (marchesdeli.co.uk) – if you’re lucky you’ll find both single Gloucester and Wye Valley mature cheese (lowergockettfarm.co.uk) in stock; a fitting taste of these two mighty rivers. Severn & Wye Smokery Millions of transparent elvers (baby eels) arrive in the Severn at the end of their epic journey from the Sargasso Sea, south of Bermuda. In days gone by they would have been turned into a fishy fry-up by locals. In the ’70s, food writer Jane Grigson helpfully advised anyone buying them: “Take along an old pillowcase so that the fishmonger can tip them straight into it.” With eels now endangered, such shopping tips are redundant. One resident is trying to save the river’s eels: Richard Cook, who owns the Severn & Wye Smokery on the western banks of the Severn, south-west of Gloucester, which is a great place to start a gastro-tour of the lower Severn and Wye valleys. The Smokery is netting elvers and raising them to maturity in tanks, a process that takes just two years, compared to the 16-plus it would take in the wild. Most are kept for breeding but a few are smoked and sold in the shop-café-restaurant, which has recently moved into state-of-the-art premises. The highlight is a gleaming fish counter run by Clive Rowlands while the restaurant, headed by Mike Benjamin (ex Calcot Manor and Gidleigh Park), offers fishy delicacies from kedgeree to salmon sides cured with yuzu, ginger and shiso and Mediterranean fish soup. Wye valley asparagus and Welsh coracle-caught sea trout join the menu, too, and from June you might even find wild Severn salmon – but get in quick as only 200 are licensed to be caught each year and many of them get snapped up by London’s Ritz. severnandwye.co.uk Where to eat in Newnham-on-Severn Heading south, stop in stately Newnham-on-Severn, one of the vale’s best-kept secrets; try Gloucester Old Spot sausages at Cameron’s Butchers (cameronsqualitybutchers.com). Blakeney, next along, houses Legg Barn (leggbarn.co.uk), a chic b&b run by Paddy Harris. Paddy used to teach cookery and hasn’t lost her culinary touch, so breakfasts – including home-reared eggs, Cameron’s meats and homemade jams – are a feast. Twist her arm and she’ll cook you dinner, too. Severn Cider, Awre In Awre, on a bulge of the river, Nick Bull's family has been making cider there for three generations in their four acres of orchards. Nick's father bought the smallholding after being forcibly retired as a pilot. Sid, the labourer whom he inherited with the property, was used to receiving tots of cider at lunchtime and after work, so the tipple had to be made. The hobby turned into a business, Severn Cider (severncider.com), and now uses unsprayed fruit from the family’s and neighbouring orchards to make cider, perry and cider vinegar. This time of year is awaited with particular excitement as it’s when the new draft ciders and perrys are released, many from single local varieties including the Box Kernel apple, thought to originate from Awre itself. Gloucester Cheese, Birdwood In the ’70s the Gloucester, a chocolate-coloured cow whose milk was traditionally used to make single and double Gloucester cheeses, nearly died out. Happily, cheesemaker Charles Martell rescued it from the brink, and now six farmers are making cheeses from Gloucesters’ milk once again. Among them is Rod Smart who, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you can watch pressing curds into cloth-lined moulds in his dairy. Double Gloucester is now made everywhere, but single Gloucester has a protected name, which means it can only be made on Gloucestershire farms with pedigree Gloucester cows. “Traditionally farmers skimmed the cream off the evening milk to make butter, then mixed the skimmed milk with the morning’s whole milk to make single Gloucester, so it has less fat than double Gloucester, which is from whole milk,” Rod explains. “Single Gloucester was ripened for just two or three months and was what the farmer and his workers ate, while the richer double Gloucester was sold to provide an income.” Nibble slivers of Smart’s single Gloucester. Its flavour is gentle, like the Gloucester cow itself. smartsgloucestercheese.com Brockweir and Hewelsfield Village Shop From Birdwood head over the hill to the next river, the Wye, which forms the natural boundary between England and Wales. Stop at St Briavels, on the English side, which on the first Saturday of each month hosts a small farmers’ market, then at a wooden building between Brockweir and Hewelsfield that houses a thriving community shop/café. Run by 60 volunteers, it stocks a feast of local produce, from Preservation Society preserves (thepreservationsociety.co.uk), to wild boar sausage rolls from Cinderhill Farm (cinderhillfarm.com), which manager Alison Macklin tells me are a hit with local workmen, her husband, and Offa’s Dyke walkers alike. bandhvillageshop.co.uk Kingstone Brewery, Tintern Abbery The valley’s star attraction, of course, is Tintern Abbey, on the Welsh side, whose romantic ruins sent Wordsworth and Turner wild. Its Cistercian monks may well have cultivated vines at the site of Parva Farm vineyard (parvafarm.com), high on the hillside, whose wines (notably its Dathliad Sparkling) are winning serious prizes. For booze of the real ale sort, head next door to Kingstone Brewery where Edward and Tori Biggs brew 10 happily hoppy beers in their microbrewery-in-the-woods, including a Tudor Ale based on a recipe from 1503. Try their Brewery Experience days, which include lunch and a box of ales, or stop off on the first Saturday of the month, for stone-baked pizzas in the log-cabin taproom (try the meat feast, peppered with salami from Monmouthshire’s Trealy Farm). Winding back to the road, pick up vegetables, fruit and eggs from Medhope Organic Garden. kingstonebrewery.co.uk The Whitebrook, Whitebrook Next stop is Whitebrook, where Chris Harrod draws on the valley’s produce in his stylish restaurant-with-rooms, Michelin-starred The Whitebrook (thewhitebrook.co.uk). It is, along with the Tudor Farmhouse (tudorfarmhousehotel.co.uk) over the river at Clearwell, one of the Wye’s culinary high-flyers. “We serve the Wye valley on a plate,” says Chris, a protégé of Raymond Blanc. Star ingredients include wild boar, which is slow-cooked until meltingly tender and served with pine-roasted cauliflower. “Boar’s a pest around here, so locals are delighted we have it on the menu,” he laughs. Chris’s passion, though, is locally foraged plants, such as menthol-scented mugwort, which he partners with pork or oily fish. Another favourite is sweet woodruff – Britain’s answer to vanilla – used at The Whitebrook to flavour a white chocolate ganache to fill nettle macaron petits fours. Humble by Nature school On the windswept plateau above, TV presenter Kate Humble’s 117-acre farm accommodates both Welsh mountain sheep and the Humble by Nature (humblebynature.com) rural skills school. Come here to master sausage-making or meat-curing with local charcutier Graham Waddington, make wild salsa verde with forager Liz Knight or crack the art of breadmaking or cooking in a wood-fired oven. If you don’t fancy driving afterwards, stay overnight in the farm’s accommodation – which includes the Humble Hideaway with its lovely shepherd’s hut. Kate provides recipe books and gear for campfire cooking, but if you’re not in the mood, head to The Inn at Penallt (theinnatpenallt.co.uk) for top-notch pub grub. Old Lands farm shop, Dingestow For fresh, seasonal vegetables and honey to take home, head west to the farm shop at Old Lands (old-lands.co.uk), an ancient eco-minded estate whose owners, the Bosanquet family, have revived its walled garden and orchard, before making a final stop at sedate Monmouth. WHERE TO STAY IN THE WYE VALLEY Double rooms at Legg Barn cost from £80, b&b. The Humble Hideaway shepherd’s hut costs from £220 for three nights, including basic breakfast provisions. HOW TO GET TO THE WYE VALLEY More info: wyedeantourism.co.uk Words: Clare Hargreaves
Padstow, Cornwall foodie guide: where locals eat and drink
Check out our favourite restaurants, cafes, bars and foodie spots in Padstow, Cornwall, including plenty of fresh fish and seafood
Looking for Padstow restaurants? Few stretches of British coast harbour more culinary talent than the Atlantic-bashed area around Padstow, where Ainsworth and Rick Stein reside have their seafood restaurants. Here's our pick... No 6 Paul Ainsworth There are only a handful of restaurants we’ve been to where we’ve wanted to book a return visit upon first bite. Chef Paul Ainsworth’s pin-sharp No 6, located in a tiny Georgian townhouse in Padstow, is one of them. The morsel that did it? A plump, deep-fried Porthilly oyster served with charcoal mayonnaise and chunks of soul-satisfying sourdough. Despite the hype around it, No 6 avoids being stuffy. Ainsworth, who trained under Gordon Ramsay and won TV fame through Great British Menu, has the playfulness and boyish energy of a labrador puppy. The décor is just as lively, with outrageously bright Cole & Son Miami wallpaper (bring your shades), and windows on to the kitchen’s theatricality. The food is equally free of fussiness, stripped of cheffy canapés and tasting menus in favour of à la carte dishes such as a Jacob’s ladder ragu with spaghetti; raw seabream served on a slaw of sand shrimp with tuna-rich katsuobushi mayonnaise; and tournedos Rossini made with chicken instead of the usual steak. The latter – a stuffed chicken breast topped with morels and a cold parfait of livers from duck, goose and chicken – is laced with a rich madeira sauce, its stock derived from an entire chicken. number6inpadstow.co.uk Caffè Rojano, Padstow Are we in Cornwall or on the sun-baked Med? Neapolitan-style pizza is one draw at Paul Ainsworth’s Caffè Rojano. Elsewhere, its menu, capably executed by chef Mike Probert, ranges from baby squid with romesco mayo or pasta with pork shoulder, chilli and Balearic sobrassada sausage, to an epic hot dog with truffled mayo, fontina cheese, sweet Cévennes onions and remoulade. Mains from £13; paul-ainsworth.co.uk Prawn on the Lawn A few cobbled streets from No 6, Padstow's Prawn on the Lawn offers tapas-style fish plates (crab som tam, whole mackerel with ’nduja and fennel, Porthilly mussels with clams and manzanilla) in white-tiled, bistro-style surroundings. prawnonthelawn.com The Seafood Restaurant When Rick Stein opened The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow back in 1975, he couldn’t have possibly imagined it would still be fully booked in 2019 and part of what has become a restaurant empire and global brand. Stein may no longer be behind the stoves but his long-serving head chef Stephane Delourme still recreates classic dishes such as bouillabaisse of turbot, cod, sea bass, mussels and langoustines, or roast tronçon of wild turbot with hollandaise for those lucky enough to get a table. rickstein.com Craftworks Above Padstow town, Craftworks produces pop-up nacho and taco suppers (think Cornish beef brisket with shredded Little Gem, taco slaw, salsa, soured cream and red onion pickles) from its food truck at Trerethern Farm. You sit on straw bales to eat while gazing over the fields of Padstow Kitchen Garden (where much of your supper comes from) and the cornfields that flank the Camel Estuary (padstowkitchengarden.co.uk). craftworkskitchen.com Trevibban Mill Vineyard Narrow country lanes from Padstow tunneling through beech trees lead to Trevibban Mill, a vineyard and apple orchard that produces ciders and wines, and houses a wood-and-glass restaurant run by Andy Appleton, previously head chef at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Cornwall. As at Fifteen, Appleton offers a creative interpretation of Italian cooking, including Middle Eastern ingredients such as harissa that he freely admits would have Italians spluttering over their spaghetti. But it works. Lunch kicks off with deep-fried sage leaves wrapped around anchovy fillets, followed by wild garlic agnolotti filled with fermented leeks and ricotta. The rose harissa fish stew (Trevibban’s must-eat main) and homemade squid ink linguine with Cornish scallops and ’nduja pangrattato are equally delicious. And of course it all begs to be accompanied by wines produced just a cork’s pop away (try the sparkling pink brut). trevibbanmill.com, appletonsatthevineyard.com Rick Stein's Cookery School Rick Stein has been credited with putting Padstow on the map (and creating bottle-neck traffic jams during the summer hols). Book into his Seafood School now to beat the queues and choose the best classes from the school’s new programme which includes everything from cooking with kids to becoming a chocolate expert, or simply keep it to what Stein is famous for. The Original Fish & Shellfish course, the school’s most popular, has new menus for Rick Stein’s Seafood school this summer, including some exciting Asian flavours, while its new skills workshops take in everything from fish filleting to Far-Eastern steaming. Among the new One Dish evening courses you’ll find Madras Fish Curry. Learn how to cook Rick’s perfect hot and sour southern Indian curry as seen in his travels on the subcontinent. Words by Clare Hargreaves and Mark Taylor Photographs by Clare Hargreaves Continue your foodie roadtrip in Cornwall with our best places to eat and drink near Padstow here...
This rugged island off the west coast of Scotland is well known for its wildlife and mountain scenery. But its produce is just as spectacular – from langoustines and squat lobsters, to succulent Highland beef and homemade whisky marmalade ice cream
Looking for foodie producers on the Isle of Mull? Travel writer Clare Hargreaves takes us on a foodie road trip through Mull, stopping off for fresh local produce, from lobsters to langoustines and cheddar-style cheese. There can’t be many restaurants in Britain where you have to hail a ferry to get there by flashing a red card from the opposite shore. But The Boathouse on Ulva, just off Scotland’s Isle of Mull, is just such a place. I duly wave the card and, soon, I’m being whisked across a steely sea in a tiny launch to the black basalt rocks on which the restaurant’s whitewashed croft perches. As we land, the whiskered head of an otter pops above the water, checking out the new arrivals. Donald, our Captain Birdseye lookalike ferryman, is the father of Emma, who runs The Boathouse along with her sister-in-law Rebecca. The shellfish that the restaurant is famed for is creel-caught off Ulva by Emma’s two brothers who, like her, were raised on the island (current population: six). Want to enjoy a taste of Scottish botanicals at home? Try one of our favourite Scottish gins here... I navigate the Fisherman’s Catch, one of the classiest shellfish platters I’ve eaten, with its salty oysters, fresh langoustines and squat lobsters (they look like fat, curly, peeled prawns). The supporting acts, from home-baked bread and oatcakes to hand-wrapped butters, are terrific, too. Having tried in vain on other Scottish islands to nab local shellfish before the Spanish do, I’m impressed by how The Boathouse and numerous other places on Mull are harnessing their fantastic produce, from shellfish to meat and milk. I also notice that virtually all the businesses are run by women. “Women here have the choice of low-paid, dead-end jobs or setting up their own business, so many decide to go for it,” says Rebecca. Back on Mull’s west coast, I meet other equally enterprising female foodies. There’s Brighton-raised Jeanette Cutlack, who makes her own haggis, which she serves with home-cooked dishes in her front-room restaurant at Ballygown . And Caroline Macphail, a dental nurse who, at weekends, runs a takeaway van looking over Loch na Keal and, behind it, Ben More, the island’s tallest peak. Caroline’s brother catches her lobsters and crabs, as well as the meat for her top-notch venison burgers. “Cyclists can’t believe their luck when they stumble across a food van in the middle of nowhere,” laughs Caroline. More remote still is Tiroran House, a small country house hotel hidden in woods on the other side of Ben More. Pre-prandials offered by tartan-sporting owner Laurence Mackay include Tiroran’s own Whitetail Gin, made with foraged heather and sea kelp, and named after the white-tailed eagles that nest nearby (you can also buy it in Tiroran’s shop-café to take away; whitetailgin.com). I kick off dinner with local Inverlussa mussels, following it with a main course of silkily tender fillet of Highland longhorn beef from Lochbuie. In contrast to many other Scottish islands, where it can be difficult to buy local meat, Mull has it aplenty, thanks to having its own abattoir. Heading to the Ross of Mull, the island’s pinky granite southwestern peninsula, I pop into Ardalanish Weavers, a farm that sells both the meat and the wool (the latter is woven into beautiful tweed) from its Hebridean sheep. Also worth the detour is Crofter’s Kitchen at nearby Kintra, where you help yourself to home-produced bread and veg, leaving the money in an honesty box. I’m hungering for shellfish again, though, so I head for The Creel seafood bar beside the ferry for the isle of Iona. It is run by two more female foodie trailblazers, Nicola Fisher and Siobhan Cameron. Siobhan’s father nets their crabs and lobsters from his fishing boat – visit at lunchtime and you’ll spot him bringing them in. The Isle of Mull scallop and Stornoway black pudding rolls have already been snaffled by the time I arrive, so I plump for a squat lobster salad roll. Why these scrumptious crustaceans are normally discarded escapes me – heaps better than puny imported prawns. Iona, with its famous abbey (established as a monastery by Irish-born St Columba in 563), offers surprisingly decent food for such a tourist hotspot, with both St Columba and Argyll hotels using homegrown organic vegetables, and local seafood and meat in imaginative dishes. The Argyll’s fist-sized teatime scones, which you munch on the lawn running down to the sea, are legendary. I dine back on Mull in an ancient croft that’s been transformed by Canadian-born chef Carla Lamont into the island’s top food ticket, Ninth Wave. Like most of Mull’s female food entrepreneurs, she relies on family – in her case, fisherman partner Jonny – to sustainably source seafood. Carla marries it with unusual flavours and ingredients, many gleaned during worldwide travels, while Jonny delivers it to the tables. Highlights are a signature warm crab soufflé-style cheesecake starter and a sarsaparilla cordial and chocolate cake pudding. Further east, Flora Corbett, one of the dynamic trio behind the Mull & Iona Food Trail, dispenses foodie delights of a humbler kind – ready meals, which she sells in the dinky shed that used to be the Post Office in sleepy Lochbuie. Try her lamb tagine, made with her farmer husband’s lamb. If you’re self-catering, she will deliver direct to your cottage. Next stop is Tobermory, a fishing port on Mull’s north-east coast, whose vibrant houses horseshoe around the bay. It’s known for its whisky distillery, Café Fish restaurant, and the kids’ TV series Balamory, which was largely filmed there. But the star, for me, is the Isle of Mull Ice Cream parlour, where Kyle Morris uses milk from nearby Sgriob-ruadh Farm to make ice creams, including her bestselling Tobermory whisky marmalade. The veggie café at An Tobar arts centre in the upper town is another must-visit. On the road above Tobermory I meet cousins Sally, who runs Tobermory Fish Company, which smokes and sells local seafood, and Helen Swinbanks, chef-owner of the restaurant opposite, Hebridean Lodge. Helen’s food is stellar. I start with beetroot and Caorunn gin home-cured salmon and Tobermory Fish smoked trout, spiked with horseradish and dill, and progress to lamb from nearby Glengorm. The latter comes with a mini slow-braised lamb leg pie so good that it’s a feast in itself, and Helen’s Gaelic coffee knickerbocker glory makes an indulgent finale. A few miles north is Sgriob-ruadh Farm, to where Jeff and Chris Reade moved their dairy cows from Somerset in 1979. First they sold milk, then switched to turning it into an unpasteurised, cheddar-style Isle of Mull Cheese. I meet Chris in the Glass Barn, the farm’s café and farm shop, where granddaughter Lily sells Chris’s cheese scones and sourdough bread, and the farm’s cheese and pork. “Our cows eat draff, the residue of the fermented grains used to make whisky,” says Chris. “It gives the cheese a taste that’s unique to Mull.” Rounding Mull’s rocky northern headland, the fairytale form of Glengorm Castle looming ahead is a sign to stop at its coffee shop and farm shop to sample a beefburger or pie from the estate’s shaggy-haired Highland cattle. Equally satisfying is the carrot cake at the Calgary Café and Gallery, from where you can nip to the hamlet’s shimmering sandy beach. Next stop is Dervaig, which looks like a toy town with its solitary street of single-storey cottages. The queue outside one of them indicates its owner, baker Louise Paterson, is about to ring a bell signaling the opening of her bakery. It’s worth joining the line: sourdough is made from emmer, an ancient strain of wheat, and the cakes would not look out of place in a Parisian patisserie. It’s no surprise to discover that Louise trained at Leiths and ran her own catering business. Be warned though, she bakes just three times a week and you’ll need to put in your order in advance. I finish my tour of Mull as I began – bagging a ferry to a restaurant. This time to The Whitehouse Restaurant across the Sound of Mull on the mainland, where I meet Jane Stuart-Smith. Just over a decade ago, Jane and Sarah Jones, who runs the shop next door, were wrestling with the fact that much of the area’s produce was being exported and locals couldn’t get their hands on it. So they opened a restaurant. In Easter 2010, after a chef failed to return after the winter break, they advertised for a replacement and managed to net Mike Burgoyne (ex Savoy, Claridges and Chez Nico) who has turned it into one of the Highlands’ gastronomic stars. Drawing on his local larder, Mike produces flavours and presentation that are classy without being fussy. In my case a lunch of pressed oak-smoked mackerel and saffron potato terrine, followed by stag loin and offal with beetroot jam and blackberry wine ‘gravy’; the meat is rosy, earthy and tender as butter. It’s so good that I secretly pray I’ll miss the ferry back. HOW TO DO IT Clare stayed at Pennygate Lodge, a boutique B&B in Craignure with doubles from £120. More info: mullandionafood.co.uk and visitscotland.co.uk. Words | Clare Hargreaves Photographs | Clare Hargreaves Follow Clare Hargreaves @larderloutUK, #olivetravels.
Langford Fivehead, Somerset: restaurant with rooms review
Read our expert review of this farm-to-table restaurant with rooms in the West Country countryside. Expect classic French cooking techniques using local food and luxurious bedrooms, ideal for a romantic break
We love a weekend getaway (check out our favourite bed and breakfasts for couples here), especially when there's great food involved, too. We check out Langford Fivehead in the Somerset countryside. Here’s our review of the farm-to-table restaurant and luxurious bedrooms… A gorgeous pre-Tudor manor, on the Somerset Levels, Langford Fivehead oozes history from every one of its flint- and fudge-coloured stones. Inside are vast Ham-stone fireplaces, four-poster beds and an ancient staircase of oak and elm. But if all of this smacks of stuffy country house hotel, it’s anything but. Thanks to Olly and Rebecca Jackson, the dynamic couple who run it (he in the kitchen, she front of house), Langford Fivehead is friendly rather than fusty, and intimate and indulgent rather than intimidating. And contemporary touches, such as the swanky bathrooms and artworks by local artists, mean it pleases young urban-based foodies and local retirees alike. This is very definitely a relaxed restaurant with rooms (six of them) and not a hotel. Rebecca is a natural and diligent hostess with a knack for making you feel instantly at home, while Olly is so chilled he’s happy for you to watch him cook if you wish. The food Having previously manned the stoves at Suffolk’s Crown and Castle and Cornwall’s Trelowarren Estate, Olly understands plot-to-plate eating. Here, the couple have put their seven acres of grounds to productive use so much of the vegetables and fruit come fresh from the kitchen gardens and orchard. But while ingredients are local, Olly’s techniques are firmly classical French, so expect braises, sauces and confits rather than techie tomfoolery. Dinner is available Tuesday to Saturday, lunch Wednesday to Friday, and guests eat in one of two intimate dining rooms (one a library housing Olly’s amazing collection of cookery books), choosing from a menu that’s pleasingly concise with three choices per course. Olly’s cooking is confident, creative and beautifully presented. The highlight of my dinner is a dish of pan-fried Dorset hake fillet with garden peas, pancetta, and home-grown hispi cabbage - a play on petits pois a la francaise - around which dinky potato towers stand to attention. It’s all parked on a bath of beurre blanc that’s rich and buttery yet also citrusy and light. Carnivorous dishes generally juxtapose a prime and a cheap cut, the meat sourced from Bonners in nearby Ilminster. Olly is a wow with desserts too – I try both the home-grown strawberry soufflé with strawberry sorbet, and the smooth dark chocolate delice with honeycomb, and it’s impossible to choose between them (the chocolate fondant with salted caramel ice cream is another firm menu fixture). If you want to be close to the action, choose the Kitchen Table option and watch your five-course meal being cooked from your table in the heart of the kitchen. The drink Navigate your way around the drinks list while enjoying pre-prandials and canapes by the fire or, if it’s fine, on the terrace. Most of the soft drinks, beers and ciders are local, as are many of the spirits, including Newton House gin, and Somerset Cider brandy crafted up the road by Julian Temperley. I go with a Funkin Bramble, a syrupy yet pleasingly punchy blend of Newton House gin and blackberry liqueur. The wine list, by contrast, is unashamedly French – to match the food – and refreshingly, arranged by price rather than country of origin. It opens at £20 and top-end wines are particularly well priced – a bottle of Volnay Premier Cru, for instance, will set you back £50, a fraction of what you’d pay in London. You can buy most of the wines by the glass, which is great if you want to test-drive some new ones. The bedrooms The six en-suite rooms are traditionally furnished, with heavy curtains and antique furniture, but there are contemporary touches too, such as the Ruark digital radios and iPod docks. Honeymooners make a beeline for Nathaniel Barnard (named after the local chap who bought the house in 1649 – spot his name graffitied into the fireplace), with its super-king four-poster, roll-top bath, Jacuzzi shower and ornate plasterwork ceiling. I also like Sybilla de Gundvill (named after the property’s first owner) which, although smaller and shower-only, has fabulously ancient elm-wood paneling. There are no TVs – which makes it extra peaceful – but if you need a telly fix there’s a burgundy-walled snug with a television downstairs. The breakfast I kick off with local apple juice and Olly’s homemade granola (nice and cinnamony) with yoghurt and mixed berries. Porridge, toast and croissants are on offer too. Hot made-to-order dishes include Full English (including Somerset sausages made by The Sausage Shed), home-cured salmon with scrambled eggs, and American-style pancakes with maple syrup. Double room at Langford Fivehead start from £195, accommodation, 3-course dinner and full English breakfast langfordfivehead.co.uk Words | Clare Hargreaves Photographs | Clare Hargreaves
County Durham: best places to eat and drink
It’s easy to drive past the county’s stone-built villages and moors, but that would mean missing out on Lindisfarne oysters, lobster sandwiches and savoury chelsea buns spiked with rosemary and cheddar. Check out our expert guide to the best places to eat and drink in the beautiful countryside of county Durham
Our expert guide to the best restaurants, cafes and bars in the beautifully green countryside of county Durham. Here you will find everything from Lindisfarne oysters, lobster sandwiches and savoury chelsea buns spiked with rosemary and cheddar. Sandwiched between the dry-stone walls of the Yorkshire Dales, the wind-tugged moors and forests of Northumberland and the urban swagger of Newcastle, County Durham has a tendency to slip off the culinary map. It’s a region often passed through on the way to destinations that show their charms more overtly. Linger, however, and you’ll wonder why you haven’t explored it before. Among the county’s stone-built villages and rugged moors is a larder as well stocked as any if you know where to look. Durham, with its A-list university and 12th-century cathedral, seems the natural place to begin, and I arrive just in time to catch the city’s monthly Producers’ Market on Market Place, which also houses a permanent covered market. I’m pulled between voluptuous yemistes (rice-stuffed peppers), wood-fired sourdoughs, and burgundy slabs of Aberdeen Angus beef from Broom House Farm. Towards the cathedral, a queue of students snaking up the cobbled street tells me I’ve reached Durham’s go-to coffee shop, Flat White Kitchen. A sibling of Flat White around the corner, its stripped wooden tables spread over two floors of a 17th-century townhouse. Both serve Ouseburn coffee and cakes made on-site (including a legendary rocky road) but Flat White Kitchen also offers pancakes and savouries and runs a monthly supper club. Nearby, at the relaxed Claypath Deli, a husband and wife team dish out equally fine coffee, plus Mediterranean-inspired produce and plates. Most dishes revolve around home-baked breads, from rye sourdoughs to challas and slowly-fermented ciabattas. For a city its size, Durham is strangely lacking in restaurants, with locals still mourning the 2015 closure of Bistro 21, owned by Newcastle food legend Terry Laybourne. Happily, though, its chef Ruari MacKay relocated to the city’s Garden House Inn, so you can still sample the Leybourne vibe. With its relaxed shabby-chic décor, this cleverly manages to be both laidback country inn and elegant restaurant; slouch in a fireside armchair with a Durham Gin and Korean spicy pork bar snack or, in the evening, dine in the candlelit conservatory. Don’t miss the lobster sandwich, a steal at £12. South of Durham, near Darlington, is the Raby Hunt. Chef-owner James Close was raised nearby and, as a boy, foraged Hamsterley Forest for wild mushrooms. He taught himself to cook, nearly became a professional golfer, then restored the inn in the village of Summerhouse. Three years later it won a Michelin star, and last year notched up a second – the first restaurant in the Northeast to do so. A warning: when dining here, start early, as the performance takes a good three hours. The only offering is a tasting menu of 11 courses, and many of those come in several ‘stages’, so the real tally is more like 16. Think theatre, not dinner. James seeks out seriously good ingredients and applies technical wizardry to transform them into works of art. I progress from glossy French caviar to plump Lindisfarne oyster, raw Australian wagyu beef and locally grown salad leaves. Yuzu, Japan’s delicious citrus, makes frequent appearances too, and James’ fascination with Japan has extended to sending one of his chefs to train there. I’m captivated by the carefully choreographed flavours – James has a playfulness that makes it all huge fun. There’s the wacky crockery; visual shockery from dishes such as squab leg, claws and all, draped across the plate. There’s wordplay like the truffle truffle petit four. And skulls, about which James seems to have quite a thing. Not only does a life-sized silver skull take pride of place between the wine decanters but dinner ends with skull-shaped chocolates whose message appears to be “Eat well before you die.” If you’ve (cleverly) booked well ahead, toddle upstairs to one of the Raby Hunt’s two rooms. Otherwise, splash out at 17th-century Headlam Hall, a mile away. In contrast, it’s the relaxed buzz as well as the food that pulls punters to the 15th-century Bay Horse Inn, just south of Darlington. This is the perfect gastropub, with drinkers in the bar-side snug providing proper pub atmosphere while the gorgeous dining rooms on either side deliver dishes that are both classy and affordable. “I cook what I want to eat,” says chef-owner Marcus Bennett. Happily it’s also what diners want to eat, as I confirm after trying his signature 12-hour braised beef with piccolo parsnips and green béarnaise. The inn is super in summer, with its glass-roofed extension at the rear spilling onto a terrace and walled garden. Next stop is the handsome market town of Barnard Castle on the north bank of the Tees, dominated by the ruins of the castle that spawned it and home to the grandiose Bowes Museum. If wood-fired baking is your thing, try the full english breakfast pizza at Cross Lanes, one of the county’s many fabulous farmshops. This live-wire business not only sells its own rare-breed pork, organic lamb and grass-fed Shorthorn beef, but has sheep grazing on its grass roof and geese patrolling the site. It’s a great place to try Darlington’s Acorn Dairy organic milk and cream, and cheeses including Teesdale, Weardale and Cotherstone from the village it’s named after, a few miles north. In nearby Hutton Magna, it’s easy to miss the tiny, whitewashed cottage that houses The Oak Tree Inn. Despite its rustic interior this is more restaurant than inn, where six evenings a week Glasgow-born Alastair Ross (ex Savoy) delivers robust dishes from fabulous local produce. I start with home-cured salmon with crab mayonnaise, pink grapefruit and radish, as pleasing to the eye as to the stomach. I dive into a main of flavour-packed Teesdale lamb with merguez sausage, mash and confit red onions. Gosh it’s good. I stay at Romaldkirk, 10 minutes’ drive north, a pretty village with three large greens, one overlooked by the honey-stoned Rose and Crown Inn. Bedrooms here are small but stylishly furnished, and there’s a choice of pub food in the bar or fine dining in the oak-panelled dining room. But it’s the breakfasts that shine for me, with homemade granola, smoky beans on focaccia toast, and smoked haddock omelette with Cotherstone cheese sauce a welcome change from the usual. Moving north, the landscape evolves from rolling farmland to deliciously desolate North Pennine moors, studded with deserted lead mines and evocatively named landmarks like Cauldron Snout and High Force. Dropping into Weardale and up the other side I reach bijou Blanchland on the Northumberland border. The village is named after the abbey built for the White Monks in 1165, whose abbot’s lodgings later became an inn and are now the Lord Crewe Arms hotel. A superb restoration means you can enjoy its ecclesiastical splendours in comfort, from 21 swish bedrooms to a baronial dining hall with vast stone fireplace, plus a vaulted crypt bar. The chef, Australian-born Simon Hicks (ex-Hix Soho), describes his food as “shenanigan-free British food”. This ranges from meats roasted on the fireside spit (on Friday Pork & Pud nights, it’s a whole porchetta – stuffed pig – which you feast on at the banqueting table) to flat-iron steak with brown shrimps in The Bishop’s Dining Room upstairs or bar bait such as ‘squasage’ on toast in the bar. I abandon the Sunday morning bells of Blanchland’s abbey for those of an equally magical spot, The Black Bull Inn in the heart of Weardale. Owner Duncan Davis installed a set of bells next door that attract ringers from across the country. The Bull’s other big draw is its hearty Sunday lunch, which you enjoy in the convivial company of local families and pensioners. I have the roast Weardale lamb, with a Yorkshire pudding the size of a cricket ball, and somehow also find space for the salted caramel and chocolate fondant pud. I get a final fill of chocolate at County Durham’s most unlikely café: the Viennese-style Kaffeehaus Amadeus run by a pair of Durham university academics who decided to swap teaching for creating the confections they grew up with in Austria and Germany. It’s a good thing they did, because the cakes here are sublime, with pear and chocolate vying with sachertorte for my top vote. As I drive the final eight miles to Durham, I declare County Durham to be firmly on my gastronomic map. If it’s not already, get it on yours. HOW TO DO IT Double rooms at The Rose & Crown cost from £135, b&b. More info: durhamlocalfood.org.uk and thisisdurham.com Follow Clare on Twitter & Instagram @larderloutUK and search for #olivetravels Words | Clare Hargreaves Images | Clare Hargreaves, Steve Landles, Bay Horse Hurworth, Duncan Davis, KG photography, The Lord Crew Arms at Blanchard