England’s Lake District attracts visitors from around the world for its scenic beauty, charming towns, literary history, hiking and more. This is the land of the Wordsworths and Beatrix Potter; Scafell Pike and Helvellyn; mossy stone walls and grazing sheep and mists. Following stops at the Grasmere Gingerbread Shop, Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage and Hill Top (a can’t-miss pilgrimage for Peter Rabbit fans, young and old), you’re bound to have worked up an appetite—and a thirst.
Wine lovers seeking a thoughtful list paired with top-notch food will feel at home at Forest Side, nestled on the road from Grasmere to Keswick. The hotel and Award of Excellence–winning restaurant occupy a Victorian mansion dating to 1853 that was restored just under a decade ago. The hotel’s 20 rooms give guests a luxurious and relaxed home base for exploring Grasmere and the surrounding region, while the restaurant serves a modern tasting menu showcasing seasonal ingredients from Cumbria.
A Wine List of Classics and Unexpected Gems
Wine director Michal Dumny curates an adventurous list of over 350 selections, plus a whopping 68 wines by the glass. The restaurant’s collection of over 2,300 bottles is stored in the mansion’s underground cellars. Dumny sees the wine program as a complement to the restaurant’s focus on small farmers and sustainable, earth-friendly production methods; the majority of the wines are organic or biodynamic.
The list highlights small producers, with special strength in Italy and France, especially Burgundy and Bordeaux. While the selection leans toward low-intervention producers who may be unfamiliar even to serious enophiles, plenty of stalwart names appear on the list. Highlights include mature Petrús, Ornellaia and many more. Those hoping to drink locally will be pleased by the selection of both sparkling and still wines from across England. There are also many wines from the New World and from lesser-known regions, including Lebanon, Turkey and Ukraine—even Japan and India.
Beyond wine, the cocktail program makes creative use of foraged ingredients. Concoctions feature spirits infused in-house with meadowsweet, pineapple weed, cherry blossom, flowering currant and more; the menu notes the date the botanicals were harvested, as well as the name of the person who gathered them. Diners in the mood for something else will appreciate the strong selection of mocktails and non-alcoholic infusions, local beer and cider, and housemade liqueurs.
Stylish Cuisine with Cumbrian Roots
Head chef Paul Leonard’s menu highlights local ingredients in an elegant homage to the beauty of the Lake District. Diners can choose from four-, six- or eight-course prix fixe menus, with optional wine pairings and vegetarian menus available.
Leonard’s style is modern, sophisticated and deeply rooted in the bounty of the Cumbrian landscape. Recent dishes included chicken fat–dressed peas with smoked eel and seaweed custard; tartare of aged Cumbrian beef with oxalis and whipped bone marrow; and spruce-smoked monkfish with kohlrabi and young shoots. Accompanying wine pairings range from a crisp Serbian white to a honey wine from West Sussex, with an off-dry Champagne from Taittinger matched with dessert.
Many restaurants proclaim their dedication to local ingredients, but Leonard takes that dedication to the level of near-obsession. Ninety percent of ingredients are sourced from within 10 miles of the restaurant, which also boasts a one-acre vegetable and herb garden that provides up to 70 percent of the kitchen’s produce. The team frequently forages for wild ingredients, including leaves, berries, flowers, sea herbs and more, and the in-house charcuterie and pickling programs are extensive.
Leonard is particularly attentive to seasonality. A saddle of Texel lamb with sweetbreads was accompanied by the “last of the year’s asparagus.” A recent dessert course starred the “first strawberries of the year” with cucumber, elderflower and buttermilk—paired with a Ukrainian Riesling. Elsewhere the menu is straightforwardly but richly descriptive in a way Wordsworth himself might have admired. Where else have you eaten “beetroots cooked all day in their own juice” or poached sea cod with “a sauce made from Solway brown shrimp”? And who could resist a dish called, simply, “apple, parsnip and pine”?
Forest Side is open every day for dinner, with lunch offered on weekends.
