Perilla alumnus to head Cambridge restaurant
Billed as an approachable contemporary restaurant, Garden House will be focused on open-flame cooking and seasonal East Anglian produce.
Wood was previously sous chef at Perilla, the highly-rated Newington Green restaurant operated by Ben Marks and Matt Emmerson.
His launch menu includes native oysters, gooseberry and jalapeno; cured chalk stream trout with green almond dressing; grilled Norfolk quail, pickled cherry and dandelion; Herdwick hogget, roasted peppers and kelp sauce; and Cambridge burnt cream tart.
The F&B offering at Garden House - including the restaurant, the Garden Bar, a café and ‘flexible gathering space’ - is being developed in partnership with White Rabbit Studio, the creative arm of White Rabbit Projects (Lina Stores, Kricket, Island Poké).
The restaurant’s design will take inspiration from the local landscape with ‘textures, patterns and tones that provide an intimate and familiar setting’.
Outside, a terraced area that extends onto the garden overlooking River Cam will offer a lighter, more informal version of the Garden House menu.
The café and flexible work and gathering spaces will offer flexible dining from breakfast through to dinner.
The menu takes its inspiration from the Garden House but is more everyday in feel, offering items including burgers, salads and baked goods.
Graduate Cambridge is part of the US-based hotel group Graduate Hotels, which currently operates 28 hotels in the US as well as a hotel in Oxford.
It hopes to open a further eight hotels by the end of 2022.
