According to my mother, my ancestors once ran Pentonbridge Inn, close to the Scottish border. We’re talking a century ago at least, because this historic coaching inn is very, very old, which means everyone who knows whether or not my great, great, great grandmother pulled pints here is long gone, including my mother, who held all the keys to family folklore. How I wish I’d made copious notes on this stuff years ago, when instead I was gallivanting down in that fancy London, eating mackerel in seawater cream at Claridge’s or some other truly vital pursuit.
Meanwhile, in about 2017, in the historically termed “debatable land” between the Solway Firth and Dumfries and Galloway, Pentonbridge Inn began to go through a vast and costly refurbishment. It transformed from a largely ignored, ramshackle fortress against the elements into a rather beautiful, bold, pale building in which are now served chef Chris Archer’s five- or eight-course tasting menus. To someone such as myself, who knows the area, the venture is intriguing. It takes pig-headed determination to sell egg-yolk ravioli with truffle beurre noisette in a spot where the road network is patchy at best and the last train stopped in 1969. Also, retaining staff from September to May might be a major issue, because up here those are the Withnail and I months in which daylight is scarce and the sleet falls mainly sideways.
Despite this, or perhaps in defiance of it, Pentonbridge Inn is thriving. In fact, they make it look so easy, you might well leave thinking: “Hospitality crisis? What hospitality crisis?” It is sleek and modern, with interiors that verge on the Scandi. Do not go expecting chintz, tartan or olde worlde Cumberland. The team is mainly local, with restaurant manager Ross Bell leading a warm, knowledgeable service without any airs and graces. These are the kind of staff who need to be retained at all costs.
At Saturday dinner, they serve eight courses, using predominantly local ingredients, including fruit, veg and herbs from the nearby walled garden at Netherby Hall. Archer has worked at Midsummer House in Cambridge and The Cottage in the Wood near Keswick, which is evident in his culinary finesse, but it seems to me that at Pentonbridge Inn he has found his true stride. This is a menu of extraordinary confidence: sometimes playful, sometimes dead serious, and always executed with precision. An opening course of “cheddar, onion, ale” is a rich, fragrant broth with a plate of cheesy, sunshine-yellow “custard creams”. It merges seamlessly into fresh warm bread with rich potted beef sealed with a thick, white layer of beef dripping. Dripping isn’t a thing you see often on menus, not least because modern audiences find the word offputting, which is perhaps why it isn’t listed on the menu.
Any sense of the informal is quashed, however, by the next plate of delicately poached chalk stream trout. It is arranged in cylindrical plinths around neat curls of pickled garden carrot, abstemious blobs of rich curry sauce and a puddle of orange essence; every fragment of hazelnut dotted around the plate feels as if it has been tweezered into place with intent by the wordless chefs in the open kitchen.
The next two dishes are plated with similar aplomb: a chunk of perfectly fried North Sea cod loin with a fat, unshelled langoustine draped over the top, poached celeriac, a single perfect rectangle of puffed potato and sweet cider sauce. This is the sort of food that makes me giddy with questions: who, exactly, is this man? Why are more people not extolling his genius? Where are the Pentonbridge Inn’s Michelin stars (it’s worth at least two)? How many times do they puff the potato to get the 30 identical rectangles, before sprinkling them with algae-coloured dust and arranging them on cod without said dust sullying the sauce or the langoustine?
In recent times especially, it has felt wrong to glorify expensive, unabashedly poncy food, but cooking at this level is something Britain should be proud of. Not just here in Cumbria, but right across the United Kingdom, where hospitality kings and queens strive daily to honour fine indigenous produce and plate it like conceptual art while still somehow keeping the lights on and the hot water running. The Pentonbridge Inn does all these things and more, while serving local fallow deer with haggis and sweet-and-sour quince.
Next, three desserts, each lovelier than the last. First, a frothy pre-dessert of whipped sour cream on Guinness and a lush, blackcurrant coulis, then poached pineapple with fresh gingerbread and a caramel parfait, and finally, my favourite, petits fours of warm, chunky, sticky canelés. Of all the French patisserie to lose your waistline over, canelés are the most under-rated. Yes, the bichon au citron and the paris-brest will always charm me, but the canelé, in all its dumpy, rum-fuelled, custard-centred, crunchy-coated majesty, rules my heart. No restaurant truly needs to make fresh canelés as its petits fours without even mentioning them on the menu, but this is one that under-promises and over-delivers. If this is the new era of the Pentonbridge Inn, it’s safe for another century.
Pentonbridge Inn, Penton, Carlisle, Cumbria, 01228 586636. Open lunch Fri-Sat, noon-1.30pm (last orders), dinner Wed-Sat, 6-8.30pm (last orders). Set menus only, five-course lunch £75, eight-course dinner £95, both plus drinks and service.
The final episode in the fourth series of Grace’s Comfort Eating podcast is released on Tuesday 27 December. Listen to it here.
