Culinary Cumbria

Lake District Tastes: Simple, hearty and international if one wishes


We are in the Lake District in northwestern England – mainly to enjoy some off-season hiking in this beautiful countryside. But everyone has to eat. England is not just about English food and pubs anymore. In the small, adjacent lakeside towns of Windermere and Bowness, we have seen restaurants specializing in Italian/Mediterranean, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian and “European-style” fare – the latter boasting, “We Feature Local Meats.” There were many indications that food here blossoms with more variety and freshness once the local crops come in. A brochure listing farm itineraries and another with local farmers' markets implied that we were there too early in the year for the best local fare.

Hotel Food -- With Local Flair

We are staying at The Famous Wild Boar Hotel, and because we are carless (or car-free), we expect to be eating there a lot during our visit. Having been en route for something like 24 hours and being unwilling to hop into another taxi, we ate at the hotel restaurant the first evening. Upon being seated, guests at each table receive a board with a couple of slices of white and dark bread, local butter and a coquille St. Jacques-style scallop shell with a few olives and several cubes of sheep cheese.

My husband ordered sausage and mash, washed down with a pint of Guinness. I ordered one of the evening’s specials, a salmon and broccoli quiche (called a “pie”) served atop a green salad (above left), along with a glass Baron Philippe de Rothschild pinot noir. We were relaxed and ready to go to sleep with dessert.




A Restaurant Selected for the View

On the second evening, ate a lakeside tourist restaurant called Lakeside Pub & Carvery, not because we had any high expectations for the food but because it was a lovely evening and we got a window seat at sunset. At the second-floor restaurant, all food and drink orders are placed at the bar. I had a mostly forgettable salad of good, moist roast turkey napped with a bottled honey-mustard sauce of some sort on mediocre lettuce, a couple of wedges of tomato and a few corn kernels. My husband went to the semi-self-service carvery station where he procured ham (called “gammon”), beef, horseradish sauce, jacket potatoes (meaning skin-on), gravy in puff pastry shells and peas. He passed on the other vegetables, but was a member of the clean-plate club, finishing everything he chose.

Midday Soup Break

Today we took a wonderful hike from the nearby town of Ambleside, over a windy peak called Wansfell, down the other side to a sweet village of Troutbeck and then farther down a scenic country lane to Troutbeck Bridge, where we caught a bus back to Windermere. It was getting a bit chilly, and we were in a soup mood.

We stopped at a charming little place called The Cookhouse Café Bistro, where we spooned up hot, house-made potato-leek soup accompanied by warm rolls that resembled slightly down-sized whole-wheat burger buns and local butter. The soup warmed us up enough so that we walked another mile-and-a-half from Windermere to Bowness, stopping en route for an ice cream. We were by then warm enough for that!


Farewell Dinner in Cumbria

This evening, we enjoyed a leisurely, non-jet-lagged dinner at the Famous Wild Boar as the rain that had previously threatened fell torrentially outside the small-paned windows.
I started with a side salad; he with a mini-tureen of tomato soup upon which floated a single friend basil leaf – about as elaborate as presentation is in these parts. For an entrée, he selected fish and chips, which here is billed as “Deep Fried Fish of the Day, beer batter with fat chips, mushy peas & homemade tartare sauce.” (left). The batter was hot, crisp and tasty, and the chips, which we call fries, were fat indeed. I ordered another daily special – this time mullet, which was sautéed in butter and served atop a small green salad in a soup plate. This small, bony fish is surprisingly rich and very tasty.

For dessert, we shared the Tirami-Sarah, way more complex than regulation tiramisu. I’m not sure that a topknot of Newcastle Cream Cheese, Sarah Nelson’s gingerbread, coffee, dark rum, Ambleside honey and Cumberland rum butter add anything to the regulation mascarpone-coffee-powdered cocoa tiramisu. (right).

Cumbria Conclusion

We had no to-die-for meals in Cumbria, but we didn't expect to. Rather, we were never hungry and certainly never unhappy.

Culinary Cumbria