Called Birch, the hotel is set within 55 acres of grounds and will have 140 bedrooms, a bakery and two restaurants run by Robin Gill and The Dairy head chef Ben Rand as well as a co-working space, fitness studios and music and art rooms as well as 25-metre pool opening later in the summer.
The two restaurants will be called The Zebra Riding Club and Valeries, with Gill working with farmer Tom Morphew to grow produce on the estate for both venues. Birch’s flagship restaurant, The Zebra Riding Club, will use ingredients from the estate’s farm and surrounding woodland and will serve a farm-to-table menu that is described as being ‘unfussy’ with ‘everything put together for a reason’.
Valeries (pictured) will be a more casual all-day restaurant serving meat and fish cooked on a grill and featuring an eight-cover PDR called The Gun Room. Birch will also have three bars and 20 events spaces.
The brainchild of Chris Penn, former managing director at The Ace Hotel in London and entrepreneur Chris King, Birch is described as being a cross between a hotel and a members club, with the first tranche of memberships priced as £100 a month for an ‘access all areas’ pass that includes lessons in the bakery, It is due to open in April with more to follow in the coming years, according to the company.
The project marks the latest stage in what has been a busy few months for Gill. The prolific Irish chef and restaurateur behind popular neighbourhood restaurants The Dairy and Sorella in Clapham has just opened modern British restaurant The Yard by Robin Gill at the newly opened Great Scotland Yard hotel in Westminster and also oversees the food and drink offer at the hotel’s other spaces, including its Parlour tea room, and its bars Sibin and The 40 Elephants.
Last summer he also opened the 5,000sq ft restaurant and bar Darby’s in London’s Embassy Gardens.