1863 Restaurant

1863 sits a stone’s throw from Ullswater in Pooley Bridge, six miles from Penrith station and a couple of hours from Manchester. It’s as biscuit-tin-perfect a village as it gets: centuries-old churches, ruddy-cheeked Cumbrians heading off for a swim, tomato-red old sports cars, the lot. You’ll probably find a farm full of talking animals if you look hard enough.

Head chef Phil Corrie has been here from the start, helping the place win a raft of awards and accolades. It’s been listed in the Michelin guide for years and currently holds 3 AA rosettes for food and a 4-star gold rating for accommodation. 

Cumbrian-born and Cumbrian-bred, at age 16 Phil applied for a job at Ullswater’s much-missed Sharrow Bay, Britain’s first country house hotel, where sticky toffee pudding was made famous in the 1970s. Despite being knocked back, like that old Chumbawamba song, Phil got back up again and built his craft, becoming the main man at one of the area’s top restaurants. 

Speaking of 90s dancefloor bangers, the band Primal Scream chose to stay here recently while performing at Kendal Calling. I assume this penchant for the Lakes means the 1991 single Higher Than The Sun is about a bracing walk up nearby Helvellyn, rather than anything untoward. Phew.

The showpiece dining event is the seven-course evening tasting menu, or you can eat a lighter five-course variation for lunch or three courses for a more conventional meal, both lunch and dinner. The staff are friendly and local, making for a pleasingly warm, close-knit epicurean experience. It all adds to a family-style take on fine dining, as if you’ve popped round to Uncle Raymond Blanc’s for tea.

In truth, it’s more like 10 or 11 chapters, once you include all the bonus bits and bobs, and there’s not a duff among them. 

A highlight is “Carrot”. A plain-Jane name for a dish that’s anything but. This is Corrie’s signature item, inspired by his nanna’s cooking and on the menu in some form since the early days of 1863. It’s also the one most requested by diners. They’re damn right too. 

It’s a jazzy, pop-art-looking dish, made up of big shapes and colours, with matching flavours. The eponymous root comes cooked in chicken fat, with chicken butter sauce poured at the table, plus dots of nasturtium oil and crushed-up crisp chicken skin hidden under the garnish. A beautifully designed array of contrasting textures and rich flavours. This alone is worth the trip. 

But that’s one of many marvellous moments from a meal you’ll be talking about for months afterwards. Each episode of pleasure is followed by another all-new variation, with nary a hint of grandiosity or stuffy formality in sight. Sharrow Bay don’t know what they missed.