Eating out in the Lake District – honeymoon week 2
May 4th 2008
After visiting the doctor the morning after returning from Amsterdam, and confirming that I didn’t have a chest infection, bronchitis, pneumonia, TB or any other lurgy (even if I felt like I did), we headed up to the Lakes for week 2 of the honeymoon. Incredibly, having been blessed with beautiful weather in Amsterdam, the Lakes pulled out all the stops and put on just as good a show, with equally blue skies and bright sunshine (admittedly with snow on the hilltops but it was beautiful so we didn’t mind).
Our first culinary experience was probably the least impressive. We decided to try the restaurant at our first hotel, the Inn on the Lake, a hotel with definite shades of Fawlty Towers about it. It has got a fantastic view, located right on the edge of Ullswater, and with the sun shining, it was perfect. But anywhere that plays piped music (cover versions of really bad MOR songs) from breakfast through until dinner needs to have a serious think about its image. Anyway, on to the dinner. The hotel’s set menu costs £35 pp, and we got the feeling that they were trying really hard, what with waistcoated staff and the hushed, ‘posh hotel’ atmosphere, but hadn’t quite nailed it. We decided to go for the vegetarian options. The starters were very nice, but the main courses were drastically over-seasoned. We suspected that nobody ever orders the vegetarian menu, so the chef may have got a bit over-excited. H’s courgette and aubergine tower was overwhelmingly garlicky, whilst my herb gnocci in a tomato and olive sauce with mozarella seemed to be drowning in that well-known herb…chilli (which wasn’t even mentioned on the menu). We both had the raspberry charlotte for dessert. We were promised, by our very friendly and helpful waitress, a cheesecake piled high with raspberries. We got a mousse on a little bit of anaemic sponge, with a layer of raspberry gelatine on top. Nice though it was, that and the other courses were not worth the £35 price tag, even with a nice view.
The breakfast at the hotel faired little better. Whilst trying to ignore the piped music, we indulged in a cooked vegetarian breakfast. H sent his back as the poached egg was cold. And we were pretty certain they’d counted the mushrooms so we had four each. Four!
Our spirits were raised later in the day however. Having spent the day out and about, and feeling quite cold and tired and in need of sustenance, we happened to be in a camping/walking shop called George Fisher, which has a tearoom at the top called Abraham’s Tea Room. We both tucked into massive, steaming bowls of beautiful, home made cream of celeriac soup and home made bread. The servings were so large I couldn’t finish mine. But we both felt greatly revived after the soup. (And we liked it so much I’ve since found a recipe online to try and recreate it.) We also bought some delicious home made date slices (the recipes for which are on their website) to take away with us, which went down very well with cups of tea later.
The first of our dinners in the Lakes was at Zeffirelli’s, a great wholefood restaurant that’s part of a little cinema/jazz club venue in Ambleside. We’ve been here before so we knew we’d enjoy it, particularly as we were just looking for somewhere to have an unfussy, laid back meal. They do great pizzas with wholemeal bases (we both had a Big One – aubergines, mushrooms, peppers, capers etc), and the atmosphere is always friendly and relaxed.
After Inn on the Lake, we moved on to the Drunken Duck, which we’d been building up to all week. It’s a pub with a restaurant and about 15 rooms, and its own microbrewery. And when we checked in, we did feel like we could live there forever! The decor in the rooms is beautiful, very ‘Farrow & Ball’ as I told my mum, and very relaxing indeed. The difference between this and the Inn on the Lake (the same star rating) was very interesting. The Drunken Duck had all the little touches just right, turning down the beds, providing a little jar of biscuits and a bowl of fresh fruit, nice toiletries and so on. Included in the room rate is afternoon tea. You can have tea, scones and jam/cream in the afternoon, wherever you like – in the lounge, in the bar, in your room, outside by the tarn if the weather’s nice. We indulged whilst sitting reading our books in the pub by the fire, enjoying a pint of their finest – we skipped the tea and just had the scones, which came still warm, and were delicious.
Dinner that night was at Lucy’s, a cafe by day, and a restaurant by night. When we’d booked by phone, they’d asked if it was a special occasion and asked what our names were. We discovered that every day, the restaurant prints its menus onto A4 sheets, with that day’s news headlines at the top, which then leads into a few sentences about that evening’s diners. So for example “Mr Y is here this evening celebrating his 50th…Mrs X is having a belated mother’s day dinner…N & H are here on their honeymoon…and we welcome all our other diners this evening, A, B, C….” It was very sweet and made us feel very welcome. And the food didn’t disappoint.
H’s starter of mushroom and horseradish soup, which to his astonishment didn’t even need his usual seasoning of pepper, was so nice. It had that lovely, comforting, soft, welcoming quality that good, thick home made soup has, like burrowing under a big duvet. I had a lovely, fresh dish of asparagus with hollandaise sauce. H chose mediterranean tarte tatin for his main course, which he only really started to enjoy after the addition of some good quality balsamic vinegar. I had an amazing lamb tagine, beautiful but way too big to finish. The lamb was deliciously soft, in a stew of apricots and mild aromatic spices, accompanied by tomato, raisin and garlic cous cous and a dollop of creme fraiche. I suspect I would have appreciated the subtle flavours a bit more if my taste buds weren’t still battling my cold. By the time we came to dessert (a rhubarb and ginger crumble with custard) I was too full to finish it, lovely though it was. H however had pecan pie and for someone who ‘doesn’t do desserts’ he had no problem polishing it off! Together with a bottle of chablis, the bill was similar to what we’d spent at the Inn on the Lake (which hadn’t included the wine) but this was definitely worth the money.
And this is where, finally, we turn our attention to the food at the Drunken Duck. This is what we’d been leading up to, and if the scones were anything to go by, we hoped it was going to be good. The breakfast menu was huge. Starting with fresh juice, we made short work of two courses each. Starters of fresh fruit for me – a refreshing mix of pineapple, melon and strawberry – and compote, granola and yoghurt for H left us feeling healthy and virtuous. Then we dug into a vegetarian cooked breakfast, which I felt slightly let the side down. The poached egg was perfect, the tomatoes and mushrooms good, but the bubble and squeak was patently mashed potato with chives, and the veggie black pudding was a bit unpleasant. The following day I changed tack and after the fruit I had a bowl of porridge (which was actually a first course dish) which was perfect.
After a long walk in the morning, and an afternoon in the pub fuelled by the Drunken Duck’s ridiculously massive sandwiches, (think wedges of bread several feet thick) we finished the honeymoon with dinner in the Duck’s restaurant. Although the food was very nice, sadly we felt it was overpriced. As H said, it doesn’t matter how good it is, no risotto is worth £16. In fact, he was underwhelmed by the veggie options as a whole. To be fair, after two weeks of eating out every day, we’d reached the point where we couldn’t actually face eating any more, so perhaps under different circumstances we would have felt differently about the food. As it was, we skipped the starters and enjoyed the amuse bouche of espresso cups filled with white onion soup, creamy and tasty. H’s butternut squash and sage risotto had a fairly redundant fussy parmesan crisp on the top – we both agreed a few shavings of parmesan would have set it off much better. My duo of lamb was disappointing for £19. It came with sweet potato and parsnip puree. I naively expected mash. I got a couple of artistic squirts as decoration, barely a teaspoon of each, so a bit of a waste of time. The lamb itself was good but consisted of a very few, very small slices of pink, juicy meat, on a bed of kale, and a kind of small mould of shredded lamb. We both thought the side dish of purple sprouting broccoli was the best bit! My dessert however, was genius and here I take my hat off to the chef. It consisted of a silky, milky, white wobbly pink grapefruit pannecota, with a blood orange jelly, and a raspberry sorbet. It was fresh, zingy, brilliantly executed and one of the best desserts I’ve had.
And there the honeymoon ended. The next day we drove back home as it started to rain, back to ‘normal’ life, with no wedding tasks to complete each night, but a massive list of thank you cards to write. Back to proper home cooking (with all our new wedding gift kitchen utensils!) and the occasional restaurant visit hopefully!
May 4th 2008
heather says your reviews are in the same league as john rayner!!
May 5th 2008
If she means Jay Rayner, then that’s very kind of her! Thanks!