Chef opens England’s highest restaurant

A restaurant will open for business on top of one of England’s highest mountains on Wednesday 14th May. Local celebrity chef Peter Sidwell will be serving three course lunches on top of Skiddaw in the Lake District on Wednesday 14th and Thursday 15th of May as part of the Cumberland Ale Keswick Mountain Festival.

All sixty tickets have already been sold for the high altitude meals, which will be served in specialist tents on the 3,000 foot peak. Reservations have been made by people as far afield as Surrey, Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle.

Instead of the usual mountain top fare of sandwiches and fruit cake wrapped in cellophane, the diners can look forward to a really high class meal seated at a table after completing their ascent.

Peter Sidwell who owns the Good Taste café and deli in Keswick says: “We’d read that William Wordsworth enjoyed a proper meal on top of Skiddaw with his friends after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. It got us thinking and we decided it would be a nice idea to give walkers the chance to have a special lunch on the fell during the Keswick Mountain Festival.

“Originally we’d planned to do just one meal but we had so many people wanting to book a place that we decided to open the restaurant on Thursday too. I’m looking forward to the challenge of preparing a meal on top of the mountain. I like to find inspiration for my cooking from the Lake District and I’m hoping this mountain top adventure will also give me a few ideas for my next cookery book.”

The first course that Peter plans to prepare on Skiddaw will be a wild mushroom and wild garlic soup served with homemade bread.

This will be followed by a confit of seared roast lamb and seared rump of lamb served with damson and rosemary jus. There will also be a vegetarian option of roasted butternut squash, pinenut and ricotta crumble.

The meal will finish with a Grasmere Gingerbread and white chocolate cheesecake served with an orange and crystallised ginger salsa.

Peter Sidwell has worked with the Cumberland Ale Keswick Mountain Festival to organise the unusual mountain top restaurant, which has required almost military like planning.

A local walking guide, Tim Mosedale, will escort the intrepid diners on the walk from the centre of Keswick to the top of Skiddaw.

Tables and chairs will be set up for the lunch in specialist Mountain Hardware Space Station Tents, so the diners will be protected from the elements during the meal. The tents are used by climbers in locations with extreme weather conditions such as the Himalayas. A specialist Dome 5 tent has also been provided by North Face for use as the kitchen.

The tents and catering equipment will be taken up Skiddaw the day before by Gordie Oliver from Air Ventures, using quad bikes and trailers provided by Paul Chuter from All Terrain Vehicles in Cockermouth.

Cheryl Frost from the Cumberland Ale Keswick Mountain Festival says: “This has certainly been an interesting logistical challenge for everyone involved, but it’s not every day you get the chance to set up a restaurant on one of England’s highest peaks. It’s a fantastic addition to all the activities that are taking place in this year’s Festival so we’re really grateful for all the effort that everyone has put in to make it possible.”

The Cumberland Ale Keswick Mountain Festival runs from the 14th to the 18th of May. As well as England’s highest restaurant, there will be more than 100 activities including walks, canoeing, climbing and navigation courses. The Festival also includes talks by famous mountaineers like Sir Chris Bonington and Alan Hinkes and celebrities like Julia Bradbury, who presents the Wainwright Walks series on the BBC.

Tickets for the talks can be bought from the Theatre by the Lake.

A full programme of activities can be found at Keswickmountainfestival.co.uk.

Peter Sidwell is the author of Simply Good Taste, priced at £15.99.