Alston Restaurant Guide

“Simply the best meal we have enjoyed for a long time… beautifully prepared… expertly presented… flawless” – Hrishikesh Desai is cooking up a storm at this plush but remote Relais & Chateaux hotel in northern Cumbria, just seven miles from Hadrian’s Wall. One meal in this “almost ridiculously high-ceilinged formal dining room” risked falling flat this year, although the diner in question still marked the food as “good”. More common are adulatory reports: “all we ate was – and I really need to stress this – superb. Not a single misstep and each dish nicely conceived and perfectly executed, with the real wows coming with the bite-sized first courses”. Many dishes involve “a super display of technique and fiddliness but are very rewarding to eat too” (“a remarkable hollow cookie-cum-tuile spider’s web astonished with its dexterity… and sympathy for the person who had to carefully pipe an excellent duck liver parfait into all its hollows!”; “an excellent scallop was perfectly cooked, and served intriguingly with a cucumber sauce, and on the side, a ‘cannelloni’ made of wafer-thin slices of raw scallop filled with a tartare of cured scallop”). Overall it’s a “well-composed tasting menu of six bite-size courses, five real courses, plus a pre-dessert for £120”. “Gosh it was a good”.

2023 Review: “Suits of armour, spiral staircases, gigantic fireplaces” – this “stunning, preserved medieval castle turned into a country-house hotel” makes a “wonderfully romantic destination”, just “two minutes off the A69 between Carlisle & Newcastle” – “you’d rave about it if you found its like abroad, yet here it is”. “Service is attentive, friendly and professional”, while “the food is extremely good, if not top fine dining”.