In most restaurants, bread is a secondary dish, but here it appears as one of the dishes, the second of six.
Here is the Michelin-starred Source at Gilpin Hotel, a Relais & Chateaux property set amidst some of the Lake District’s most magical landscapes, just east of Windermere.
And he has every right to elevate the status of his ‘Parker House Roll’, because it’s glorious.
Sitting at one of the restaurant’s elegant round wooden tables, I am in a mild state of ecstasy as I bite into a freshly baked pastry of warm, doughy lushness flavored with wild garlic and glazed with fermented honey.
The icing on the cake, so to speak, is a generous helping of cultured butter sprinkled with smoked sea salt.
Michelin-starred Source (above) is located at the Gilpin Hotel, a Relais & Chateaux property set amidst some of the Lake District’s most magical landscapes, just east of Windermere.
It’s good enough to be the main dish.
Source is run by Fat Duck alumnus Ollie Bridgewater, who was sous chef at the three-Michelin-starred restaurant for five years.
The food here, by his own admission, is simpler. But it is precise, tasty, seasonal and technical. And delivered by waiters who aren’t the most polished (cutlery sometimes falls on the table in a slightly haphazard manner, for example), but who are certainly enthusiastic and welcoming.
What’s more, at £90 for six courses (£150 with wine pairings) and £120 for 10 (£200 with wine pairings), it’s delicious value for money.
I earn £35 for two pizzas with a Pizza Express Deliveroo.
The pre-bread dish is a salad of royal Jersey potatoes, fresh peas, asparagus and goat’s curd, with asparagus velouté, brushed with wild garlic oil.
A shame it’s bite-sized (at first I mistake it for an appetizer), as it’s delicate and comforting.
Bread at first sight: Source’s Parker House Roll, which Ted describes as a “mass of warm, doughy lushness”
Pictured on the left is the St. Peter’s fish dish and, on the right, the ‘piece de resistance’: manjari chocolate dessert, Source’s version of a Black Forest cake.
Beautiful view of the water – one of the Gilpin Hotel’s spa suites is shown above
Source head chef Ollie Bridgewater
To accompany it, and the first entry in the spirits ledger, is a delicious glass of brut rose sparkling wine, made in Kent by Gusbourne.
I take a sip, then resist the temptation to drink the rest of this juice in one go as a gulp.
After the bread comes a succulent slice of John Dory, accompanied by Isle of Wight tomato and gently seasoned with a tomato ponzu. This is followed by beautifully cooked, melt-in-your-mouth Herdwick lamb, served with wild garlic puree, asparagus and juicy lamb jus.
The fresh ingredients work in harmony with each other and with the perfect wine pairing, a velvety Carmenere red from Chilean producer Vina Casa Silva that, by the time this review is published, I will almost certainly have purchased for personal domestic consumption.
The pre-dessert is a magnificent “poached rhubarb” sorbet, poached in Campari and rhubarb juice. A mini pyrotechnic plate.
But perhaps the piece de resistance (of the entire menu if you have a sweet tooth like me) is the manjari chocolate dessert, Source’s take on a Black Forest cake that features a heavenly spheroid of precisely crafted chocolate mousse, combined with a hazelnut cream, cocoa seed ice cream and cherry (with an edible ‘stem’).
This is combined with a sweet orange muscat made by Andrew Quady of California.
A golden nectar that completes a golden gastronomic experience.