Despite a tight turnaround after the rebrand under new executive chef Ollie Bridgwater, this hotel restaurant kept its Michelin star. Louise Rhind-Tutt visits the Lake District
Executive chef Ollie Bridgwater arrived at Source at Gilpin Hotel (previously named HRiSHi) in January 2023. Just a few weeks later, he learned that the restaurant had retained its coveted Michelin star. "We didn't expect that – I thought it would be another year," he says. "It was a real affirmation for the team that what we're doing is right. We'd changed everything – the name, the concept – and we'd only really had about six weeks to do it."
Bridgwater, who started working in kitchens aged 14, joined Gilpin from Heston Blumenthal's the Fat Duck, where he spent a decade, and has big plans for Source: "We want to create something really unique in the Lake District, an amazing restaurant with a strong identity." The changes have included rethinking the menu as a whole. "We wanted it to become more of a journey," says Bridgwater, whose tasting menu begins with a gin and tonic – though not as you'd expect.
"I like the idea of a welcome drink, and I liked the way we played with liquid nitrogen at the Fat Duck," says Bridgwater about the striking spoons of encapsulated green liquid which burst in the mouth. "This is a drink that you eat. The process is spherification, but we do it in reverse because it's alcohol based."
The next two courses arrive together. "The cracker we make from tapioca with a seaweed emulsion with smoked eel and coastal herbs, nice and umami," says Bridgwater. On the side are lightly dressed scallops, pickled Japanese radish and a gazpacho made with herbs from Gilpin's vertical farm. "We put the herbs through the slow juicer, which has gears instead of blades; it doesn't smash stuff up and break the particles, it presses them and squashes out all the oils. You get a lot more flavour. We make an oil from parsley and chervil, make mayonnaise from that and blend it. The oyster cream we make from fresh oysters lightly poached to pasteurise them, like mayonnaise but with oysters instead of eggs. It's all very light, high acidity, super-cold."
A bronze, buttery Parker House roll is flavoured with foraged wild garlic, "We glaze it with honey and butter and put a little bit of lavender on top. We serve that with a cultured butter that we do ourselves and whipped bone marrow."
Bridgwater got the inspiration for his roast Scottish lobster dish from the chicken satay served in Chinese restaurants, "the way they put skewers onto a bed of lettuce and the heat wilts it". Source's satay is a lightly spiced bisque with peanut and chilli paste, using a base stock made from lobster shells. The lettuce is compressed in iced water "to make it super-crunchy, so we're able to char it and cook it gently in chicken stock infused with brown butter and lettuce leaves. You get the flavour of it being cooked but a crunchy texture."
Silky soft loin of cod is a celebration of nuttiness – asparagus, Spanish jamon fed on acorns and an almond sauce dotted with jewel-like trout roe which has been marinated in sake and mirin with a touch of soy – and then it's onto two meat courses. Bridgwater's small but punchy version of a Reuben sandwich is made with short rib braised for three days. "We make our own pastrami spice to season the rich meat and our own sauerkraut to put on top with pickles, mayonnaise and mustard. We finish it with a sourdough foam, so that's like the bread. It's Reuben sandwich flavours that people recognise."
The second dish is a take on beef and ale. "We use a beautiful piece of sirloin and make a caramelised onion purée, but like a fluid gel."
Bridgwater had the idea for his popular sushi rice pudding dessert with miso caramel, sesame and sake ice-cream while doing a sushi tasting at the Fat Duck. "We had this furikake seasoning which had puffed barley in it, and I thought, ‘this would go amazingly with ice-cream'."
The second dessert is a quintessentially British combination of strawberries, lavender, Earl Grey and reduced milk ice-cream. "We make a lavender infused cream, we make a pâte à bombe meringue and part whip the cream and mix them together into a mousse which we freeze. Underneath we have Earl Grey caramel. We make our own compote: we mix strawberries with about 10% sugar and cook them for 45 minutes at 80ºC to make a clear consommé, then we set that into a fluid gel and blend Gusbourne Champagne into it."
It's an elegant end to a confident, creative menu which is all about detail and precision. It certainly marks Bridgwater, who is only at the start of his Gilpin journey, as one to watch.
From the menu
- Gin and tonic with cucumber
- Tapioca crackers, seaweed emulsion, smoked eel, coastal herbs
- Gazpacho of herbs, scallop, pickled radish
- Wild garlic and honey Parker House
- Roast Scottish lobster, lettuce, peanut, chilli
- Loin of cod, almond, asparagus, roe, jamon
- "Reuben" braised beef, pickles, mustard
- Beef, onion, morel, wild garlic, ale
- Sushi rice pudding, miso caramel, sesame and sake ice-cream
- English strawberry, lavender, Earl Grey, reduced milk
Tasting menu, £120; with paired wines, £200. Cheese as an additional course, £14
Source at Gilpin hotel, Crook Road, Windermere LA23 3NF
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