Oh, the other question was how many covers we do. A really modest 20-25 on a good day. We like to make sure everybody is treated well and with care. Tonight, unfortunately, I only did 4.
This Evening's Menu Sun 06 Sep 2009
Starters
Quack'n'Oink
A rich tasty coarse Duck and Pork pate served with toast and red onion marmalade
£6.75
Stumpy Goats Cheese
Thornby Moor goats cheese stumpy grilled on top of an olive oil crouton, served with apple and red onion sauce and fresh fruits
£6.50
Sardines on Toast
Fresh sardines, grilled and served on top of our home made toasted bread, with a spicy tomato sauce
£5.75
Game Velouté Soup
A rich creamy soup reduction of various game stock finished with Croutons
£4.95
Mains
Ginger Fillet
Best Cumbrian Beef Fillet Steak - dry marinated with slices of ginger and garlic; pan fried, flambéed in Cointreau and finished with cream. Served with sauté potatoes, celeriac chips and butter asparagus
£17.95
Rabbit Hole
A tenderised rabbit haunch rolled with rabbit haggis stuffing and rabbit fillet, served with dauphinoise potato and tomato blushed courgettes, dressed with rabbit jus
£16.50
Chicken Cheese Parcel
Roasted (Lowther free range organic) chicken breast filled with Thornby Moor Winnow Blue cheese & garlic, wrapped in Cumbrian bacon served with Rosti potato, and aromatic braised broccoli, finished with a white wine sauce
£15.50
Eskdale Pork Othello
Outdoor Eskdale Saddleback belly pork rolled with an oriental stuffing, slow roasted, and finished with a cider pan jus glaze, served on a bed of velouté mash with contrasting white cheese and dark fruit sauces, and topped with Caramelised Apple.
£14.75
Ewe like Oriental??
Medallions of Eskdale fell bred lamb, marinated pan fried and glazed with a hit of the far east, served with spicy risotto and steamed Pak Choi
£13.95
Lakeland Char
Gilcrux farmed Lakeland Char, a rare Atlantic salmon which evolved to breed in the deep lakes of the Lake District. Poached in tarragon butter, presented on soy braised leeks with a red onion potato stack.
£12.95
'Hey Pesto' it's cheesey
Open ravioli of grilled Thornby Moor Goats cheese, dressed with tomato & red pepper sauce & pesto and served with fennel
£12.50
Desserts
Baked Alaska
Our home made fruit ice cream, covered with meringue on a cake base and baked in the oven - big enough for one or two.
£7.50
Cumbrian Cheese & Fruit Board
A selection of locally produced cheeses served with fresh fruit and savoury biscuits
£6.25
Blue bore bomb
White chocolate, cream cheese and Cumbrian Winnow blue cheese fondant dark chocolate crunch base bomb
£5.95
Crème Rice Brulee
Mildly spiced rice pudding and a crème brulee topping with hints of ginger, star anise and lemon grass, finished with caramelised sugar
£5.95
Sticky Toffee Pudding
Sticky Toffee Pudding served with home made vanilla ice cream
£5.50
Locally sourced
We source our ingredients as locally as we can. Our suppliers include:
Beef Pork & Lamb from Country Cuts, Santon Bridge
Fish and Game - Gilcrux Trout Farm
Cheeses - Thornby Moor & Low Sizergh Barn
Milk, cream fresh fruit and vegetables - Andy Pratt
Carrs Cumbrian milled flour for our home made bread
The Woolpack Inn. Boot, Eskdale Valley. 019467 23230 www.woolpack.co.uk
There, that'll get some of you asking "Do you not do anything normal, like pie perhaps?" hopefully some of you will be drooling.
mmmm pie, I can do a really mean pie. Perhaps I'll have to think of a posh version.........
17 comments:
Baked Alaska is one of my favourite things - I'd be happy for you to serve it any way you like!
Although I'd quite like to have the fillet but with the dauphinoise potatoes - any chance....?
I'll take the sardines on toast with a zippy IPA, followed by Eskdale Pork Othelle with a Belgian Dubbel and then Blue Bore Bomb with a bottle of Tokyo*. I'll leave now so should make it in time for dinner tomorrow ;)
Maybe thinking thirty odd quid for my three courses shows me to be a tight git, but I doubt if I'd pay it on a normal night out, though the menu sounds good. Special occasion though? Yes.
Adding a few pints plus wine and an overnight stay would make it a dear do. Maybe best part of £230. Savoy Grill or Dorchester style dear do.
I like what you do, but I doubt if I'd do that of a weekday,but on a special occasion it sounds sublime.
Kristy, you'd love our baked Alaska. The fruit ice cream is heaven.
Sorry, and I know I'm going to get stick for this, but we don't mix and match the menu. It's complicated enough without trying to work out which fussy customer wanted what with which. It's also a presentation thing. Working out how to do something different , on-the-fly, how to fit that on the plate to make a new dish is also difficult. Plus, it pisses me off and spoils my night and then don't cook well. Additionally, a lot of it is pre-portioned for each dish before service. The dauphinoise is a particular case in point. The costs are also worked out for each dish. The rabbit dish that has the dauphinoise on it is relatively cheap in terms of ingredients but the whole dish is very expensive in my time and part of that time is the preparation of the potato section of the dish. The fillet is an expensive cut of meat but we do it a bit simpler and the labour costs are low. We can do the fillet at a very reasonable price, considering the extremely high quality of the meat, because the man hours are low. The front of house staff are trained to carefully explain that it's not what we do and would the customer like to choose another delightful dish.
Mark, good choices. Tokyo* really does go very well with the Blue Bore Bomb. I must post the recipe for that.
Tandleman, yes, that's what we're trying to do. We're not a normal pub and we're not trying to be. It's about increasing spends per head, not increasing bums on seats.
Mind you, many don't have all three courses - that's certainly not compulsory. I reckon you could get two 3 course meals and a night B&B here for £130. That would leave you £100 for drinks on your budget - that's quite a few Tokyo*'s. Stay 2 nights mid week and the second nights accommodation gets a £20 discount.
Northern,
I'm not quite sure what mortgages have to do with it. Unless your point is that all companies have various packages including banks and building societies - cherry picking from their deals is no more acceptable than cherry picking from my menu. Which plays into my argument of course.
Pretentious? perhaps, but it plays to the people I like and that makes me happy. Sorry.
I've no problem with the prices and being greedy I would probably have three courses. Some good veggie options and a tick for having the local cheeses. A homemade cheese & onion pie wouldn't go amiss, though:)
There should be a curry on there for those with rhino nuts. Something that'll turn your arse into a jap flag! I'm not talking cheap either.
Charge appropriately for it.
The food sounds great, to the trained ear that knows how to filter out the poncey shite.
I'd have the pate to start, mainly because the others sound too complicated, but what should I drink with it since beer and food pairing is all the rage? Main course - probably the lamb, though isn't ewe technically mutton or even hogget? By the way - can you have an "open" ravioli? For sweet, sticky toffee pudding, as it the only one that doesn't sound like some southern nonce stuff. Yes, guess the northerner.
From previous posts you get the idea that you are more of a pub that a restaurant but now, who knows?
Exactly what are you?
Good God that is not cheap. Even by London standards it is expensive. How much is the beer? Rochefort 8 at Hops in Crewe £2.95 bottle
This highlights part of the problem I have here. The base footfall here is low. The numbers through the door most of the year is not great and has never changed much with anything we've done. Not the best scenario for a pub.
Occasionally, during bank holidays and other busy times it does get busy, but that is too occasionally to base our whole operation around.
We are a pub in as much as we have a public bar. We also have a restaurant, but if people feel our formal restaurant is to stuffy they can eat the same food in the bar, providing there is spare cooking capacity in the kitchen.
We also have rooms. Most of our food and drink revenue comes from people staying here, mainly because we are out on a limb and there are not enough people around to provide a large enough trade to warrant a "proper pub" style food offering.
We are a remote Lakeland Inn. Perhaps think Country Guest House and Restaurant that also has a public bar. Is that a pub? You choose.
But I thought pubs were about drinking, not food? We have a public bar where anybody is welcome. It's not food driven. Yesterday we had two wet walkers, it was raining and the summer holidays is over and mid week so we are quiet. They loved the sign on the door that says something like "Muddy boots, dogs and wet walkers welcome"
Perhaps next I'll post the lunchtime walker menu. I think the reader will find a contrast.
To all those who want to criticise my prices, I think the food is worth at least what I charge. Some dishes, like the rabbit, should probably be charged more due to the amount of effort. The other day I had a chef in the bar who was sorry he was too late for dinner. He couldn't believe I was doing the rabbit the way I am, far to fiddly and time consuming.
Can't have an open ravioli? By that argument you can't have an open sandwich.
Where do I stop with all of this? Basically, we are not an ordinary pub - far from it. My blog talks about the general pub industry as I see it. I could not recommend that every pub does what I do. But every pub has to find it's own niche. The ones that stand still will eventually die. The general pub going public needs to understand that and realise that not every pub is for everybody, it can't be.
I still think my place is a pub in as much as you can come in for a drink, without having to eat - end of.
I'll try that again.
Dave i like your menu a lot, I like what you stand for and I hope more people follow suit. If its not to cheeky I'd like to link to a blog about our menu and ask for you and anyone else's opinion.
www.crownbrewery.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-menu-at-hillsborough-hotel.html
The link to Hillsborough Hotel
Dave - thanks for taking the time to respond and I really get your rationale.
On the pricing assuming your food lives up to it's promise (which I'm sure it does!!) I think your prices are reasonable and your menu offers a great choice. Yes you could have a Big Mac Meal for a third of the price but nowhere near the value, I know what I'd rather choose - even without the daupinoise ;o)
I think that menu sounds great, i actually don't think the prices are too bad either, Dinner b & b for £130 - £160 isn't that expensive.
Especially when you consider the rubbish that some places pump out along with that if you go for a "standard" bar meal then 1 course is usually £8-15 quid depending on what you have.
I like the idea of being able to eat something a bit different in the bar in my walking gear and not having to stick to the same food that every other pub does.
you need a few more recipes with a bit of heat tho dave ;o)
Keep up the good work dave!
Asparagus? In September?
Thanks Moggy,
Actually, there is a web site called chilli up north that I'm going to steal some recipes off soon, I think......
Stringer, mmmm, yes took my eye off the ball there. Kept ordering it and it kept coming - bugger, how is it September already....?
Do you do anything on the lines of grilled fish with salad? It all looks lovely, but nothing that fits in with my diet.
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