For many chefs the competition typically comes from their peers as other restaurants seek to catch the eye and food preferences of paying customers.
At The Cottage in the Wood, Jack Bond is competing against a much small challenger vying for attention. As diners tuck into his menu, eyes are drawn to the cute red squirrels enjoying their own feast just feet away.
Head chef Jack and his wife Beth have taken over at The Cottage in the Wood, at Whinlatter, from Kath and Liam Berney, who had run it for 22 years. They have handed over the reins with their blessing to a young couple who are keen to continue the legacy of the much-loved restaurant and rooms.
The timing could not have better for both parties: one ready to retire, the other poised to build their own business after deciding to leave London having built a reputation, Jack in food and Beth as restaurant manager.
With their first baby on the way too, they are embarking on a new adventure in one of the most beautiful settings the Lake District has to offer.
Originally from the Peak District, the options after graduating in physics at Imperial College London – finance or consulting – did not excite Beth, although she did join the graduate scheme at IBM initially. “I didn’t enjoy working in an office behind a computer all day,” she says. “I really wanted to be a chef but my parents did not want that after spending so much money on university. I’ve always loved food, it’s been my thing, and people used to say I’d marry a chef one day.
“I had saved up lots of money and wanted to go to the Cordon Bleu chef school but my parents said go and try being a chef first and see if you like it. I rebelled a bit and said OK, I’ll do it, but I’ll do it in Australia.”
That was 2013 and she began by googling all the food truck businesses in the Melbourne area. “One offered me his broken down truck; it wasn’t working but he said I could have it, so I got it cleaned up, repainted it and gave it lots of TLC and had an amazing time doing music festivals, weddings and events serving New Orleans-Tex Mex street food. I absolutely loved it.
“I came back to England thinking I’d have a food truck empire but without having worked in a kitchen. To get some experience I applied to the team of Marcus Wareing and they offered me a trial at Tredwells under Chantelle Nicholson.”
As a 150-seater restaurant in Covent Garden it threw her in at the deep end in the kitchen where everything was made from scratch.
On her second day, Jack walked in as covering sous chef. “I thought, ‘oh dear, I think I’m going to marry him.”
She stayed in the kitchen for 18 months, then got the chance to come front of house doing guest relations and hosting events then marketing and communications.
“Then our restaurant manager didn’t come in one day and I had to step up into that role. Another day the sommelier didn’t come in so I did that and in time I did end up running the restaurant.”
When the pandemic and enforced closures hit, they attempted to turn Tredwells into a takeaway. “The problem was that no-one lives in Covent Garden and there were no tourists, so we were really struggling. I found a space in Hackney and we opened a pop-up called All’s Well and it became our Covid baby. It was a massive learning curve opening a restaurant from scratch and I took charge of all the beverages across both sites.”
In 2021, Chantelle decided to close Tredwells and opened a new sustainability-focused restaurant, Apricity, in Mayfair, the following year with Beth as general manager. The ethos was to be as sustainable as possible, in everything from sourcing from most sustainable suppliers to the uniforms, the furniture and the paint on the walls. Apricity followed Tredwells in earning a green star from Michelin, which recognises commitment to sustainable practices.
Jack’s background is slightly more complicated. At school in Crosby, near Liverpool, his form tutor, who taught food technology, helped him find work experience with a new deli and caterer, Pickled Walnut Food Company.
It continued into a Saturday job as kitchen porter and, aged 16, he was soon learning kitchen basics, serving in the shop and helping with contract catering, for weddings of up to 120 people, tennis tournaments and the Royal Variety Show at St George’s Hall.
However, his parents too did not see it as a potential career. “My mum couldn’t really cook and my dad used to cook breakfast for tea. But one of my friend’s dads was a brilliant cook. I’ve always had a really big appetite and we would be doing our homework and I’d watch him in the corner cooking spag bol Keith Floyd-style.
“I was really drawn to it by then. It took a while to convince my parents of what I wanted to do but eventually my dad sat me down and said, ‘if this is what you want to do then make sure you’re good at it’.”
At Southport College he was recommended to start working in restaurants so he joined Paul Askew at London Carriage Works and 60 Hope Street while doing weddings at weekends.
Jack’s connection to the Marcus Wareing group came via the restaurateur’s brother Brian, who ran an outside catering company in Southport.
Jack was introduced to Marcus and started with a stage at the two-Michelin star restaurant Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley, in Knightsbridge, doing everything that was asked of him and more – including cleaning the ceiling. His work ethic must have been appreciated because he was taken on full-time, working his way up from commis chef to sous chef.
“It was incredibly tough,” says Jack. “I didn’t really anticipate how hard it would be moving to London, but I worked my way up from apprentice to senior sous chef. I was working across all three restaurants, including Tredwells, covering senior chefs’ holidays and stepping in where needed.
“After eight years I felt it was time to leave. I was looking for other restaurants in London but accepted a job that was going to be in Hong Kong, then I told Marcus and he said ‘no!’. How about I send you to New York instead.”
In 2017, Jack joined the three Michelin star Eleven Madison Park, the same year it took the top spot on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. “It was an incredibly talented group of chefs, some of whom have their one one-star restaurants now. They changed the cooking scene and everybody else followed them. It taught me how to run a kitchen.
“It was one of the big turning points for me. Their whole ethos was not to have a barrier between the dining room and the kitchen. The culture was amazing; everyone was really happy and really wanted to go to work. When you’d done a 45-hour week they would send you home, whereas in London we were doing 80-hour weeks.”
After seven months he was asked if he wanted to stay, which would have meant a five-year visa commitment. Instead, he returned to London to be part of the team opening Davies and Brook at Claridge's.
As a new restaurant, it allowed him to instil some of the practices he had learned in New York including the 48-hour week and close teamwork. It was a success, earning a Michelin star after just six months. Jack stayed there for almost three years as executive sous chef.
“After that I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I was going to work for Waitrose, in the cooking school but they told me, on my 30th birthday, that I was too cheffy.”
In the end, he joined chef patron Matt Abé at three-star Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, in Royal Hospital Road, London. “I went from being quite out of love with the job to going to work for probably the hardest restaurant in the country to work in. I understood what that restaurant meant in the history of food, it’s an institution, and Matt and head chef Kim Ratcharoen helped me to enjoy working at that level again, really pushing myself, being creative and very proud of what we were achieving.” His next move was to Cumbria.
Beth’s love at first sight reaction proved to be lasting, and the couple got engaged in lockdown.
“Jack wanted to get married here because the Lake District was very important to him. He came for lots of holidays as a child, with his parents and grandparents, so we started looking at venues. I fell in love with Low Hall, at Lorton, and when planning our honeymoon I came across the shepherd’s huts at Another Place, Ullswater.”
By now, Beth too had been wooed by the Lakes’ charms. “We said, ‘shall we just live here instead of going home to London?’.”
They moved north, Beth finding a job at Another Place and, after making some calls, Jack was appointed as head chef at Source at Gilpin Hotel and Lake House, near Windermere, under Ollie Bridgwater.
“We got on really well and created menus together. We pushed the restaurant forward and created a really nice working culture there,” says Jack.
As a wedding present they had received a mini-moon at The Cottage in the Wood and as they sat looking across to Skiddaw they agreed it was the perfect venue. “We said, ‘this is what we want, the most perfect location, a lovely size, and less than a year later we were here,” says Beth.
“Kath and Liam wanted to hand it over to someone to continue the legacy because they are really proud of everything they have achieved in food and drink at the hotel.”
In a strange coincidence, Liam had contacted Chantelle Nicholson to ask if she would be interested in the job. Beth continues: “Chantelle had replied that she knew of someone in the Lake District who would absolutely love it. From the first meeting we all realised this was what we wanted.”
The Cottage in the Wood certainly has a strong record in the kitchen. Cumbria Life columnist Ryan Blackburn worked there before he branched out on his own and opened his Michelin starred Old Stamp House, in Ambleside. Then came Chris Archer, who secured his first Michelin star at Pentonbridge Inn last year, and Ben Wilkinson, there for five years, brought the restaurant its own star in 2019, which it has retained.
“It’s been an amazing place for chefs to come through, they just seem to project from here. It’s a breeding ground for talent,” says Beth, “and we want to do it justice.”
Former head chef Sam Miller had left and the restaurant was closed when they came in January. The first job was to start recruiting the kitchen team, although a couple of front of house staff had remained. Alongside Jack in the kitchen now are Guy Ripley, who has come from Colchester via Berlin, and Danny Champion, who worked at Northcote Manor and the White Swan, at Fence, near Burnley.
“We have rebuilt the team and it’s a good place to be,” says Jack. “We have been able to put into practice all the things we have learned about culture over the years and we can do it together now.”
One of those is a radical feature: the kitchen team serve the dishes to guests. He explains: “It’s one way of being very transparent and breaking down the barriers. We are proud of the dishes we serve and it’s amazing for our guests too to have the head chef come out with their food. It’s more genuine when the information comes from the person who has cooked it, and we can answer any questions.
“We want to connect with the guests and make sure they have a nice experience and feel like we felt when we came here as guests. It’s how we want to run things here.
“We also want to create somewhere where people want to come to work; it’s important to us that everybody enjoys being here. We are trying to build an ethos and that’s making people part of our family.”
Jack has created two different menus that run over two consecutive days – seven-course tasting menus “with surprises” (£120) and five courses at lunch (£75) – so guests booking a two-night package in one of their eight bedrooms can enjoy two Michelin star menu experiences.
Dishes can change regularly due to him sourcing hyper-seasonal ingredients and championing small, local producers. Dishes may include Gin-cured Trout, Horseradish Beetroot; Jerusalem Artichoke Agnolotti, Pickled Walnut; Scallop, Smoked Eel, Matelote; Pear, Vermouth, Crème Fraîche; and Chocolate, Pedro Ximénez, Pecan.
They are also bringing their experience in sustainability into the kitchen. Jack says: “We try to make the ingredients do all the work. We try to close the loop on wastage. We make our own butter, then the buttermilk goes into our bread and any left over goes into a trout dish. Any wastage from the bread goes into or miso. Beetroot pulp is pickled and fermented and used with fish.
“I see it more of a challenge to see how much we can do with one ingredient to avoid waste. It’s too easy to bin something. Nowadays that doesn’t sit well, it’s just lazy.”
Meanwhile, Beth works on creating regenerative wine lists and zero waste cocktails and of course running front of house.
The location of The Cottage in the Wood, which is believed to date back to a drovers’ inn in the mid-1600s, plays into their ethos.
“We are in the middle of a forest on a mountain, it’s a very special, protected place, and special to a lot of people,” says Beth. “It’s an incredible environment and we have to be very careful and make sure we do it justice. We are off the mains system – water is sourced from our own spring on Magic Hill – and we need to be sustainable about things like that.”
The forest will sustain them too with foraged ingredients, while the red squirrels will please guests in the 30-cover restaurant.
Beth adds: “It feels like an amazing time to be in Cumbria; it seems to get better and better, what an honour to be here at this time.” Colleagues like Ryan Blackburn and Paul Leonard, head chef at Forest Side, have helped out, and Jack has met others from being involved in the Save Windermere chefs’ dinners.
He adds: “There is a sense of community here that we really like, there’s great camaraderie. As soon as Ben Wilkinson heard I was here he messaged me even though he’s not in the Lakes any more.”
No-one is wishing them well more than Liam and Kath, who took on the venue as a career change. Originally from Manchester, Kath had been a nurse and a university educator in nursing, while Liam was a chef and a catering teacher in further education.
“We bought The Cottage in the Wood in the early 2000s when it needed some TLC. We have spent 22 years doing just that and putting it on the map,” says Kath. “It’s been about nurturing the talent we’ve had and allowing them to thrive.”
“We’d always been food focused but we didn’t know how far down that road we would go,” adds Liam. “It’s been a process of constantly raising the bar, which led to achieving the star.
“I contacted Chantelle because I thought the business opportunity was so right for her, little knowing her protégé had stayed with us. And Jack is an exceptionally talented chef and seeing it go from strength to strength is so important to us.”
The couple have moved to Loweswater and will look on with interest. Kath says: “Beth and Jack are a breath of fresh air with a strong team to take it forward. It’s reassuring to us that it’s in safe hands.”
Michelin has been informed of the changes in the kitchen. No restaurant knows when inspectors are dining, but they were told they would be visited “very soon”. Of course, they would love to the star reaffirmed under their tenure. “To be part of that amazing food community is really important,” says Jack.
One star is, however, not his only goal.
“We dream big and obviously it would be nice to push for two stars but there are a lot of things we want to do, such as working with local ceramicists and woodworkers, people we can take with us towards aiming for a green star.
“It’s such a part of what we are about and getting that we would really reaffirm what we are doing. A green star is definitely the next milestone.”
thecottageinthewood.co.uk
