Hardens Guide to the Best Restaurants in Hawkshead
Hardens guides have spent 33 years compiling reviews of the best Hawkshead restaurants. On Hardens.com you'll find details and reviews of 13 restaurants in Hawkshead and our unique survey based approach to rating and reviewing Hawkshead restaurants gives you the best insight into the top restaurants in every area and of every type of cuisine.
Featured Hawkshead Restaurants
1. Langdale Chase
British, Modern restaurant in Windermere
Ambleside Road - LA23
Positioned on the edge of Lake Windermere, the restaurant at Langdale Chase is closed at the time of writing while it undergoes a multi-million pound refit, with re-opening planned for late 2023. In July 2023, owner Daniel Thwaites announced the appointment of chef Michael Cole to steer the kitchen for the main dining room, whose floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the lake and the Coniston Fells.
2. Rothay Manor
British, Modern restaurant in Ambleside
Rothay Bridge - LA22
This “beautiful country house hotel restaurant” has long held a reputation for “wonderful food in a really wonderful Lakeland setting”. It “continues to offer high-class, interesting cuisine in the chef Daniel McGeorge era”, with “innovative and delicious cooking” – “so seasonal, the entire meal evoked autumn on a plate”.
3. Drunken Duck
British, Modern restaurant in Ambleside
Barngates - LA22
Also home to the Barngates Brewery – whose brews are on tap – this rural pub is a popular destination on the Lakeland tourist trail. It didn’t generate much attention in our annual diners’ poll this year, but such as we received was ‘all good‘ (although some feedback suggested “mains aren’t as good as the starters and puds”).
4. Henrock
British, Modern restaurant in Bowness-on-Windermere
Linthwaite House, Crook Road - LA23
The “outstanding” if “lesser-known and more relaxed cousin of the Lake District’s most famous culinary destination” – L’Enclume in nearby Cartmell – “Henrock is a fabulous option for those struggling to save up for (or not quick enough to book)” at the former. You still get real “Simon Rogan excellence”, “overlooking Lake Windermere” in the “lovely Linthwaite Hotel”, complete with “brilliant artwork, great views, delicious and innovative food, and delightful staff and service”.
5. The Samling
British, Modern restaurant in Windermere
Ambleside Road - LA23
2023 Review: Set in 27 acres, this country house hotel is one of the better-known luxury destinations in the Lakes and boasts a dining room whose floor-to-ceiling windows provide magnificent views of Windermere and the surrounding peaks, where chef Robby Jenks presides over the kitchen. It inspired very upbeat (but relatively little) feedback again this year, with nominations as an ideal romantic choice or for its impressive afternoon teas. For a full meal in the dining room, lunch is a four-course affair for £60 per person, and in the evening the sole option is a seven-course tasting menu at £115 per person.
6. Hooked
Fish & seafood restaurant in Windermere
Ellerthwaite Square - LA23
2023 Review: This “tiny restaurant in Windermere specialises in expertly cooked fish and seafood”. Established in 2010, it changed hands three years ago and now shares ownership with Bowness-on-Windermere’s Urban Food House. On the debit side, it can be “a bit lacking in atmosphere” (one reporter discerned a “retail shop feel”) and a couple of reports diagnose service issues relating to “post-Brexit and pandemic staff shortages”.
7. Holbeck Ghyll
French restaurant in Windermere
Holbeck Lane - LA23
2022 Review: Ratings weakened this year at this luxurious Lakeland hotel, whose wood-panelled, traditional dining room provides a splendid vantage-point for gazing over Lake Windermere. One reporter felt that the “competent, but potentially excellent, cooking was not value for money, due to willing but overstretched service” – perhaps signposting that the blip was due to the tribulations of the times?
8. Fellini's
Vegetarian restaurant in Ambleside
Church St - LA22
2022 Review: Below a cinema, this popular ‘Vegeterranean’ (vegetarian with a Mediterranean twist) has long been a feature of this Lakeland town. Prices are very reasonable.
9. Lake Road Kitchen
Scandinavian restaurant in Ambleside
3 Sussex House, Lake Road - LA22
Chef James Cross returned to the Lake District after doing time at acclaimed eateries Noma, Per Se and Simpsons to set up this new Nordic restaurant with suitably Scandi styling (wooden plank walls, sheepskin throws on the chairs). The dinner-only dining room turns out eight- or twelve-course tasting menus, and wins raves for the “absolutely faultless cooking, amazing service and atmosphere”.
10. Old Stamp House
British, Modern restaurant in Ambleside
Church St - LA22
Ryan Blackburn and general manager brother Craig’s decade-old venture – the poet Wordsworth’s office when he was the local stamp distributor – is a truly “first-class” affair; the “cellar-type interior gives a cosy atmosphere”, while the “unique” tasting menu of locally sourced food (acclaimed by the tyre men since 2019) is abetted by staff who take “evident pleasure” in their work. Is it cheap? Well, “a full-blown evening tasting menu at £95 per person seems really quite reasonable” to one reporter… “anyway, it raised the bar for cooking in Cumbria for me”.
11. Kysty
British, Modern restaurant in Ambleside
3-4 Cheapside - LA22
“Delicious food, beautifully presented in a relaxed environment”, has won plenty of admirers for this spin-off from the nearby Old Stamp House, where head chef Dan Hopkins’s “modern, accurate cooking” makes excellent use of prime Lakeland ingredients, including Herdwick lamb. It’s “good value”, too – especially for the “brilliant set lunch”. ‘Kysty’ apparently means fussy in the Cumbrian dialect.
12. Zeffirelli’s
Vegetarian restaurant in Ambleside
Compston Rd - LA22
“Such a pleasant place to eat with lots of customers who don’t even realise they’re in a vegetarian restaurant” – this Lakeland fixture of four decades’ standing is part of a town-centre complex incorporating a cinema and jazz bar. Pizza and pasta are staples of the vegetarian Italian menu, and for £28.95 you can book a complete evening out including a two-course dinner and reserved cinema seat.
13. Source (fka Hrishi), Gilpin Hotel
British, Modern restaurant in Windermere
Crook Rd - LA23
“Never failing with the quality of food and service” – ex-Fat Duck chef Ollie Bridgwater did well to hang onto the Michelin star at the Cunliffe family’s Lakeland hotel, where he succeeded Hrishikesh Desai (who previously ran the dining room as Hrishi) just a matter of weeks before it was due to be re-rated. Despite the constant updating of the property, it is a relatively traditional space. There’s a three-course à la carte for £90, or a six-course tasting option for £120 (£200 if you go for the accompanying wine-tasting accompaniment). There is also a less informal option of the Knipe Grill at Gilpin Lake House, which is a waterside building elsewhere on the estate. And see also Gilpin Spice.
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