Return to Rogan's

In an earlier post I described a visit to Simon Rogan's L'Enclume restaurant in Cartmel in the Lake District. I returned recently for a birthday celebration. The restaurant is clearly doing well and on a Sunday night in April was nearly full with over 20 covers. The service and the food was just as good as before.

Rogan has moved his a la carte menu out to a new restaurant that he has just opened in the village. We did not have the chance to eat there but plan to on our next visit.




The restaurant now has several properties in the village and we stayed in a newly converted cottage. It was nicely furnished and decorated but some of the building and plumbing work had not been finished off properly.





Cartmel is an interesting place. It is only a small village but in addition to Rogan's it has its own racecourse [with meetings four times a year] and is the home of the sticky toffee pudding. If you have never tasted a Cartmel Village Shop Sticky Toffee Pudding you should add the experience to your todo list. I noticed recently that Waitrose have started stocking the puddings.

There is clearly a lot of money in the locality. I called in an antique shop that had some beutifully restored firniture but the prices were in the £15,000 plus range. I liked a dresser but its price tag was £18,000.

On the way home we called in the attractive village of Kirby Lonsdale and found the Churchmouse cheese shop. This had the best selection of cheeses that I have seen outside of France. Apparently they won a best cheese shop award in 2007. They do mail order from their web site but their minimum order size is £25 [too high for me to be a regular customer].