What?
The Black Bull restaurant and inn has opened in Cumbria, following two years of renovations on the 17th century site.
Who?
A family affair, the Sedbergh restaurant is owned by couple James Ratcliffe and Nina Matsunaga, who own The Three Hares café, bistro and bakery just down the road from their new venture. Ratcliffe, as general manager, heads up the front of house operations at the restaurant, while Matsunaga controls the kitchen as head chef. Ratcliffe, former general manager at the Mark Addy in Manchester, also runs a catering company, and prior to launching The Three Hares, ran street food pop-ups in Manchester with Matsunaga. Raised in Germany, Matsunaga takes her experience from The Trove Café in Manchester
The vibe
Located in a former coaching in on the edge of The Yorkshire Dales and The Lake District, The Black Bull comprises 18 rooms, a bar and a restaurant. Interiors make use of local materials and crafts. Wooden walls, pictures of the surrounding countryside, plants and terrariums give the restaurant a casual, stylish feel, with fireplaces and leather booth seating for guests to sit in when ordering from the bar. The picturesque countryside surroundings make the restaurant and inn an ideal place for a short break
The food
The restaurant’s offer is much more formal than that at The Three Hares, but maintains the same attention to provenance of ingredients and seasonality. The majority of the meat on the menu is produced within a 20-mile radius of the restaurant, and the owners have good relationships with many local farmers, brewers and producers. Matsunaga takes the reins in the kitchen, and her menu uses both Japanese and British influences in dishes such as smoked duck with duck tongue, miso and broad beans; wild sea bass with tomato arancini, chestnut and samphire; beef sirloin and shin with girolle puree, turnip, sprouts and coffee; root vegetable wellington with pickled red cabbage and sprouting broccoli; and Swaledale goat with Jerusalem artichoke, chanterelle, hazelnuts and nasturtium. A bar menu offers the likes of Scotch egg with piccalilli; smoked trout pate and sourdough; and Sedbergh ham with pumpkin chutney.
The drinks
In-keeping with the restaurant’s dedication to locality of ingredients, the drinks are sourced as much as possible from local suppliers and brewers- with the exception of the wine list, which has Germanic hints throughout.
And another thing
Sedbergh, where the restaurant is located, is a ‘book town’, and hosts the Sedbergh Book Town Festival each year – this year, it falls on the 5th. A Book Town is a “small rural town or village in which second‑hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated,” according to the International Organisation of Book Towns, and Sedbergh is one of only three in the UK..