It is mushrooms on toast, but not as we know it: ‘award-winning Lovingly Artisan sourdough topped with sauteed mushrooms, pickled shimeji mushrooms, watercress puree, aioli and artichoke crisps’.
Or how about bubble and squeak, only this time your humble potato and cabbage is transformed with two crispy hash browns, the cabbage sauteed in butter with leeks, salt baked swede, topped with honey mustard-glazed ham hock and a parsley and onion sauce to pour over the top.
It is traditional comfort food made surprising, interesting and very, very tasty.
Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that these dishes are served not in a trendy bistro but in a café in a shop, Lakeland’s flagship store in Windermere to be precise. What is more, each satisfying plateful comes in at less than £13.
They, along with kedgeree arancini – a twist on the traditional with smoked haddock risotto balls in a rich curry sauce – and the barbecued pulled port toastie with dill pickle cucumber, celeriac coleslaw and mojo sauce, are the work of Ben Donkin and his team at The Café at Lakeland.
They help make the home and kitchenware shop a destination, somewhere to eat buttermilk waffles for breakfast having bought your waffle maker downstairs; to enjoy some artisan toast while imagining your own bread maker on the go at home.
There are very popular soup and sandwiches, bacon sarnies and a full Lakeland English too, but this is an in-store café that pushes the post-shop eating options beyond the average.
When you learn of Ben’s background, it is easy to see where it comes from.
He grew up on the Holker estate where his dad, Grant, was private chef to Lord and Lady Cavendish. Grant had worked in Lakeland hotels, but his role at Holker Hall saw him cooking meals for the family, for dinners and banquets for many visiting guests, including HM The Queen.
Young Ben started to help out at a young age at home where his mum Michelle, also a trained chef, taught him how to make his own favourite pasta sauce.
“From a very young age I would either go down to cook with dad or at home like I do with my own children. As I got older I would help make bread and things like that. I always remember getting taught how to make a white cheese sauce for pasta. I was probably quite young when my mum showed me.
“We always had roast dinners as a family which I have continued with my children. Whatever kind of meal it is it's that time together. Family is important and that's what a lot of my life is geared around.”
At 31, Ben is dad to Ollie, who is nine, Harry, aged six, and four-year-old Lilly. He takes his responsibilities very seriously which is why the 8.30am-4.30pm hours at Lakeland appealed when he joined seven years ago.
Daytime cafe hours – considered a luxury for chefs – were not where his experience lay, however.
A pupil of Flookburgh Primary School, Ben was in Year 11 at Cartmel School when a catering lecturer from Kendal College visited to give a careers presentation. “I had always cooked, and I enjoyed it but I never thought about it as a career as such. I just cooked because I could, but on a very basic level.
“I was thinking about it vaguely but then my food teacher got me a work placement in hospitality,” he explains. The placement was at L’Enclume, which had been open six years and had earned its chef-patron Simon Rogan a Michelin star and four AA rosettes. Now it holds three Michelin stars and is at the centre of an international food empire.
“It was the early days but Simon was an amazing cook. It was a very big eye opener into a world that I didn't even know existed. I remember meatballs with a tzatziki foam that was mind blowing,” recalls Ben.
He must have impressed on his work placement because he was offered a part-time job at L’Enclume whilst studying a two-year diploma at Kendal College.
“I started off front of house and then got asked if I wanted to be in the kitchen. After I finished college I was asked if I would go full-time. Hopefully they had seen a bit of potential and that I was capable of doing what they asked me to do.
“It was quite a small team back then. There was Simon and two other people on meat and fish, one person on larder, one on garnish, one on pastry, maybe just five or six of us.
“It was a fantastic place to learn, and especially now it's amazing because they have the people to get full potential out of people like me.”
Ben started on larder for the first year. “I was very young and it was a quite hard learning curve. You are responsible for a lot. I made quite a few mistakes but they were explained so I learned and developed.”
Among those who taught him the ropes was Chris Johns. Eventually the larder job started to click and Ben’s understanding grew as he moved on to garnish then spent four years on pastry, which was his specialism at college.
Another he worked alongside was Tom Barnes, who recently opened his own restaurant in Manchester. “He has a wealth of knowledge that is second to none of any chef. He is one of the greatest people I've worked with and I just wish I’d had more time with him,” says Ben.
By 2015 L’Enclume had gained a second Michelin star and was number one in the Good Food Guide. “I remember sometimes it being complete euphoria,” he says, “but I was young. You don't realise at the time but looking back now as an adult I understand; I can see the drive and the clear vision Simon had and what we were wanting to do.”
He also cites Dan Cox, who built Our Farm and former head chef Mark Birchall, Kevin Tickle and Mike Engler.
“The amount of great mentors I had was amazing. They are very clever people with a very clear vision of what is possible. It wouldn't be where it is now without those people going for greatness. I appreciate it a lot more now than I probably ever did then.”
Ben stayed at L’Enclume for eight years, by which time he was married to Viki and was a new dad. He moved on to the Drunken Duck, at Barngates.
“Because I was working on pastry it was quite late nights and I felt I needed to do something more to be with the family. I knew there were two choices in this industry: family life or really going for your career, and for me family life was more important. It was there at a very young age.
“Now there are much better working environments in hospitality. With hindsight I maybe should have had a conversation about it, but I remember as a child my dad being out at night working and I wanted to do what I could to make sure I was at home more.
“My hours at the Drunken Duck were 8am-5pm and one day I would start at 3pm. At that point in my life it was exactly what I needed, but leaving L’Enclume was the hardest thing I ever did.”
The Drunken Duck was another Lake District restaurant garnering its own fair share of attention at the time. “It was a very popular place, completely different but still amazing food. I had free rein to develop different things and still had a lot of family time.”
Ben became sous chef under Johnny Watson. “He was very good at teaching. He showed me how to make sauces which I hadn’t got to do at L’Enclume, and about maintaining consistency. All the people I worked with there were fantastic.”
Two years in and Steven Dodd, who was manager at the Duck, left to join Lakeland, and Ben went with him, helping to develop the menu for, again, a different clientele.
At that time, the café was run as a separate entity but on reopening after the pandemic lockdowns Lakeland took the operation in-house.
Ben leads the kitchen team, working closely with Julie Glandfield who runs front of house. They manage the café together with oversight provided by Lakeland’s chief customer officer Neil Piggot.
“Part of my role as sous chef at the Drunken Duck was speaking to suppliers and understanding and managing costs, but understanding how to run a business was different for me and very much an eye opener. These last four years have given me a lot more knowledge of what business is.
“L’Enclume was about an extremely high culinary experience and skill levels for things to be as perfect as they can be. Being here has taught me what it takes to be a business. The directors have a huge amount of experience and while hospitality and retail are different there are parallels as well.
“Four years down the line I have got a very established kitchen with processes I'm very happy with and new people who come in with whatever skill level they have can join and learn.”
They include a young protégé he has brought into the kitchen from front of house, replicating the move he made early in his career.
With a team of eight, they are able to combine working hours that fit with family life while at the same time producing food customers enjoy.
Ben adds: “One of the main things for me was understanding the clientele we have and learning how far I could push the menu. It's a balance between what I want to make and what is going to sell because it has to flourish and be a sustainable business.
“We offer dishes that people know, like bubble and squeak and quiches but we make sure we offer the best, freshly made version of those things so that it's tasty and it's what people enjoy. I'd say the early learning on flavour profiles that I gained from L’Enclume is very much still there in my cooking.
“People love soup and sandwiches so although it’s simple food we have to make sure it’s tasty and made to the best quality that we can. We use Lovingly Artisan sourdough but a soft crust bread for sandwiches.”
Ben has also learned to adapt, for example his pulled pork doughnut. “I really enjoyed it and it looked fantastic, but it didn't sell enough to stay. We now offer pulled pork as a toasty which people like. With our systems we can see very quickly what are our top sellers.”
Eventually he would like to have his own restaurant. “It’s a big step and I don't know what level it would be but as long as it's honest and the best it can be I don't think it matters what food it is. It's a dream but at the moment I have got everything I need here.
“I am here for the life I wanted to create for my children. Lakeland has given me everything to enable me to do that while still making tasty food.”
