CityLife

Gilpin Lodge

HIDDEN TREASURE: Gilpin Lodge

ALL the top Lakes hotels have a view of an expanse of water. Gilpin Lodge is the high and dry exception.

It is marooned in some quiet, rolling countryside south of Windermere that lays no claim to the sublime.

When we first stayed there 10 years ago, the lodging was immensely friendly, smoothly-run with fine dining but just a touch chintzy and constricted.

On our recent return, to dine, it was even more friendly but had undergone a vast transformation into a subtly chic hideout.

It wasn’t really a surprise. I’d long been following its evolution towards being Cumbria’s Best Small Hotel 2009, arguably the region’s best hotel bar none, as befitting its Relais & Chateaux status.

When it acquired a Michelin star for its food we were almost on our way up the M6 one weekend, but a small family crisis put paid to that – and soon other kitchen sirens wooed us.

Last year the star went down the pan. In January, Chris Meredith, the chef who had gained it (after similar feats at the nearby Samling) departed for his own gastropub and we again held fire.

What finally Gilpinned us down was the surprise choice of their new young head chef, Russell Plowman, to cook the Herdwick lamb main course at the launch of the first Relais & Châteaux cookbook, A Taste of Relais & Châteaux, at Harvey Nichols London this July.

Host Raymond Blanc heaped praise on his efforts, which was good enough for us.

Plowman’s progress has been starry – training at the three-star Waterside Inn, Bray, with Alain Roux and the Michelin-starred L’Ortolan in Berkshire – but he has his work cut out now, burdened with regaining the fallen star and tempering his talents to the needs of a hotel, rather than a destination dining spot.

Is he on course? The answer: a resounding yes.

Our mood was mellowed by champagne and an enticing first look at the menu in the spanking new bar, bordello red walls giving it a surprising metropolitan feel at odds with the 22 acres of lush Lakeland greenery outside with its pet lamas and rain-blackening skies.

Petits fours

The dinner menu costs £52.50 for five courses and canapés, with a £4 add-on for coffee and petits fours.

The wine list, unlike the food choice, covers a lot of ground, but food and beverage manager Mark Slaney was an assiduous guide through the backwaters of Burgundy for us.

From the lesser known Cote Chalonnaise region we chose a Givry from Domaine Lumpp, which was as limpid as its name is not – all cherries and spice and surprising depth.

Lovely but inappropriate with fish, it sat out my starter, a salmon bundle that features in the Relais cookbook and is obviously influenced by Plowman’s L’Ortolan mentor Alan Murchison.

A ballotine of organic salmon, horseradish and potato mousse with a delicate beetroot salad was quite perfect in its subtle matching.

Equally stunning in a comforting way was my companion Ms Potter’s girolle mushroom veloute, smooth as velvet and forest-flavoured, a poached egg sliding over the fungiferous morass.

Ms Potter, or Renee if you prefer, had lamb two ways, the roasted best end and braised shoulder that so impressed Monsieur Blanc and co, garlic potato puree and rosemary sauce.

If the jus lacked the depth of its counterpart at nearby Holbeck Ghyll, holder of the sole Michelin star in the area now, the lamb, particularly the shoulder, was more toothsome.

My pink-raised veal advertised itself as local. I guessed it might be from the famous Farmer Sharp, who specialises in rearing veal from dairy bull calves, bucket fed on milk in barns.

Whatever, the veal on my plate had a dense yet delicate texture, forming with its saffron risotto accompaniment a kind of osso buco without the bone, spinach and olive oil providing the unctuousness.

We were eating by a window in one of four cosy dining rooms, farm animal ornaments adding quirkiness to the mix-and-match luxury (if you stay in a Gilpin room, you have to leave a leather stuffed cat outside your door to signal ‘do not disturb’).

Dark chocolate mousse, golden sultanas, blackcurrant sorbet was a sublime trilogy for Ms P’s pudding. My vanilla crème brulee was one of those brittle brulees where you feel you are cracking the arctic surface (in the days before global warming, of course).

The gingerbread ice cream, though, was too cloying for me and the gingernut biscuit a superfluous conceit.

It hardly mattered after a mela of more than immense promise. You feel behind occasional polite presentation (too many sauceboats and over-smooth purees) there is a culinary nous that is destined to win back that Michelin star. Follow the Plowman’s progress.

Gilpin Lodge, Crook Road, near Windermere, LA23 3NE (015394 88818, gilpinlodge.co.uk)