Food
The land leads. The menu follows.
Our chef has an impeccable background in Michelin * kitchens but every menu at Keythorpe begins in the walled garden. On Monday morning the chef walks the beds with our head gardener, sees what is at its absolute peak, and writes the week from there. The asparagus on your plate was in the ground minutes ago. The carrot your child pulled before lunch is on the table by dinner, carried through the secret door to the kitchen.
This is not farm-to-table as a concept. It is the only way we know how to cook.
What the garden cannot give us comes from neighbouring farms and artisan producers within roughly five miles, Wild herbs and plants are foraged from our own woodlands. Nothing is imported that we can grow or find close by. Even the staples we make in-house as much as we possibly can – simple cheeses, cultured butter and sourdough breads.
When the garden slows, the kitchen turns to older methods, preserving the best of each season so it can be eaten in the next. Miso is made from koji raised on estate pumpkins. Apple molasses, made from orchard leftovers, stands in for balsamic. Nothing is wasted. Plum stones flavour ice cream, and pumpkin is dried until it tastes of dates.
A menu built from conversation
Your menu is carefully curated, and it starts well before you arrive. We talk with you about the occasion, the dishes you love, how you like to eat and the guest who won’t eat anything green and the one who eats everything. Then the kitchen cooks for everyone – a family recipe remembered and recreated, or a plate you might find in a Michelin * restaurant. Always with the best seasonal ingredients and a real meaning behind what’s on your plate.
Expect elegant family meals and long, unhurried feasts, each laid in a different place: the dining room, the terrace, the sunken garden, the woods, all adorned with a changing tablescape overflowing with flowers cut that very morning.
Drink
With good food goes good wine. We have teamed up with award winning sommelier and author of ‘Which Wine When’ Bert Blaize.
Bert honed his skills at La Belle Epoque in Manchester and Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons, before taking the reins at the Clove Club in Shoreditch, East London, and more recently opening an award winning fine food & wine shop in North London.
Bert will be your wine concierge - available to create a personalised wine and drinks experiences to match the menus and the occasion at Keythorpe Hall.
