Escape the rigours of a Cumbrian winter by booking a table at the seriously good Forest Side
Forest Side, Grasmere, Cumbria, LA22 9RN (01539 435 250).
Meal for two, including drinks and service: £120 plus.
We should probably deal with the whole “butter on a rock” thing first. Being sophisticated souls, we laugh in the face of anything that isn’t a plate, don’t we? Or as my youngest once put it: “You start with a mini chip pan fryer and before you know it, there’s couscous in a mini wheelbarrow.” Well quite. But using a polished rock for the butter – exceptional chive butter, the colour of a bowls lawn, dressed with Lilliputian deep-fried onion rings and nasturtium blooms – is a tidy declaration of intent. Kevin Tickle’s cooking at Forest Side, a small country house hotel shoved into the lee of a hill just outside Grasmere, is an expression of the Cumbrian landscape. A shiny stone does the job nicely.
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