Heft

Heft is as heft does. This Michelin-starred restaurant sets the benchmark for Lake District fine dining. It’s a momentous meal. 

The location: a 17th-century inn in the quaint village of High Newton near Cartmel, run by Kevin Tickle and his wife Nicola. 

Tickle? We’ve heard that fun-loving name before. No, not a Roger Hargreaves creation; once upon a time Kevin was the main (mister) man behind The Forest Side in Grasmere – responsible for one of our all-time great eating adventures, while Nicola has bossed front-of-house for many, many noteworthy Lake District establishments. 

Kev’s a local lad, growing up on Cumbria’s Furness Peninsula, hunting and fishing as a child, while Nicola’s family have farmed these fells and valleys since the Jacobean era. 

This could explain why Heft feels so correct. It’s very much of this area and doesn’t try to be anything but. 

It’s both pub and dining space – a relaxed, cheery tavern as you enter, with a well-lit, airy, restaurant through the back. It eschews the shiny gloss of many modern high-end restaurants, feeling more like it was carved into rock, centuries ago. 

The food reflects this timelessness. No molecular silliness. Instead, we get fresh, never-before-seen takes on glorious local produce like mugwort, monkfish and hen of the woods mushrooms. 

It’s a meal packed with poetry. We’re told our first course – a masterful combination of fungi, soy, ewes curd and pork cheek broth – feels like “falling over in a wet forest” (it does, but only a crackpot-slash-genius could come up with that description), while the Cornish gilt-head sea bream looks like a pre-Raphaelite lake in miniature. 

The menu of matched wines, too, could be the most memorable in the North. That same sea bream is paired with a natural Greek rosé (the Domaine Ligas’ 2022 Le Rosé, from Pella, grape-fans) which teams up to make a remarkable tomato-heavy tang, seemingly out of nowhere. The whole pairing is packed with these sit-up-and-take-note moments. 

Happily, the Tickles have done it again. This is a meal for the ages – effortless and unconventional, in equal measure. A must for inquiring dining minds.