Published 28 April 2026
Cumbria's cooking has quietly become some of the most serious in Britain. Where we send guests, and how to get the table.
Something has happened to eating in Cumbria over the last fifteen years, and it happened without much noise. Small villages now hold tasting-menu kitchens that would draw a queue in any capital city.
Cartmel remains the centre of it. A village of a few hundred people supports two ambitious kitchens and a bistro that would be the best restaurant in most market towns.
Elsewhere, the pattern is the same: talented chefs choosing landscape over city rent, cooking what is grown, caught and shot within a few miles of the pass.
The practical advice is simple. Book before you book the house. And if you cannot get in, ask us — a table released at short notice is exactly the sort of thing our concierge team spends its days finding.
Stay somewhere extraordinary
Every house in our collection comes with the team who wrote this.
