What the Press Say

I got to Cumbria ... and was then free to test those widely held prejudices about the small-town northern reand three-coin transactions. But I was dazzled. Blown away by the originality, integrity and extravagance I found during the best run of restaurant experiences I've had in years.

Take Lucy's in Ambleside. The main operation is a tiny top-end delicatessen/grocer designed to cater, as far as I can tell, for holidaymakers used to the range and quality of Selfridges Food Hall. It's all very good, very posh and very expensive. The sort of plastaurant scene that had led me to anticipate a dizzying whirl of gristle, fisticuffs ce you occasionally encounter in the boondocks where you have the feeling that they saw you coming a mile away, but you are secretly rather pleased they did. If you turn right on entering the shop, through a small arch and down some steps, you emerge into a folksy little low-lit restaurant of clean wooden tables and bustling staff with a blackboard pudding list that must have named 100 desserts.

The menu itself is as deliciously personal as any I have seen; a couple of hundred words from Lucy at the top ranted against the hunting ban and went on to offer "a warm welcome to you all - to the Coops, for whom it is the last time in the Lakes until next year (Happy Christmas to you!), to the Donnellys, Stanleys, Hunters..." Call it cheesy, but to look at the reservations book in the afternoon and then do that with your evening menu - it's a beautiful thing.

There was Bluebird Beef (local meat braised in the great Bluebird ale of Coniston), Cranberry Bambi (local venison with cranberry), Herby Saffron Cod (sounds like a very posh Twenties rally driver), Lamb Rumpy Pumpy and lots more bad puns screaming madly for attention on behalf of some very good, hearty food. Bobbing Bobotie was a bastardised South African dish involving a bowl of minced lamb with brandy and almonds under a savoury custard and served with a pretty, pretty pale-green and white salad of straggly cucumber noodles, celery, spring onions, lettuce and a dressing of mint raita.

On the first Wednesday of every month, Lucy holds her "Up the Duff Pudding Night", when £20 buys you all the pudding you want and a glass of dessert wine. You might have pecan and maple bread-and-butter pudding, Westmorland toffee apple crumble tart, deep-dish egg custard tart, Lancashire lemon tart, toffee capuccino crème brûlée, Bailey's banoffee toffee trifle, nutty raspberry pavlova and, for afters, perhaps just a light enema.

In a more Londonny mood I might have been inclined to sneer at the wilful naïvety of it, and have made more play of the shockingly turned-out walking community that tends to pack the place out at lunchtime (when the menu is far duller anyway) and push the percentage of customers with their trousers tucked into their socks past the level at which I remain physically able to swallow my food. But I was three weeks into an extended Lakeside walking and reading and snuggling-down session, and was as free of narky urban snottiness as I have ever been, and I loved Lucy's.

18/12/05