Journeys
There are so many journeys you take; many are unnoticed daily rituals: to the fridge for milk in the morning, through a book before bed. But of all the unseen journeys, the one a menu takes from first spark of imagination to the plate is a little miracle in itself.
Ours started with everything around us: Montgomery cheddar from our home farm, with its distinctive tang and earthy flavours; bright and bitter salad leaves from a passionate market gardener round the corner(see below); heritage grains turned to flour for our flatbreads.
As our chef, James Howarth, says ‘Our menu will be driven by our suppliers, be it vegetables, meat or fish. What they produce or catch being the driving force behind what ends up on the plate. This keeps the dishes we produce in the kitchen naturally grounded. That’s the plan at least’ Much of ours will be tied together by our wood-fired Gozney oven, which will belt out a mixture of classics, new and old, and sing a song of our locality.
‘We’ll have vegetable led, seasonally-driven plates such as wood roasted cabbages and Romesco, roast leeks and ogleshield, whipped fava bean houmous with raw vegetable and fermented chilli, or lamb scrag ragu with potatoes and salted ricotta. Dorset crab milk bun, with dill butter; our fried potatoes with roast garlic anchoiade. But what we’re most excited about is the breakfast wood-roasted bacon flatbread.’
Meet you for breakfast, then? And maybe stay on for lunch?
