Award-winning Artichoke Restaurant in Old Amersham expands
The Artichoke Restaurant in Old Amersham has expanded, and now offers diners the choice of three distinct dining rooms, including a bright, first floor private room for up to 16 guests.
The extension into the next door property has also allowed head chef Laurie Gear to build a spacious new open kitchen for his brigade where they will continue to prepare the carefully conceived, Modern European menus the restaurant has become known for.
The entire ground floor now offers a sense of spaciousness, and whilst elements of the original design concept remain, each dining room has its own look. Freelance designer Fiona Johnston Parke, from Emily Todd Hunter Interiors, worked closely with co-owners Laurie and Jacqueline to ensure that the rooms all related to each other. She also wanted to include some of the inspiration Laurie gained from spending time in Scandinavia during a stage at Noma, combining this with the fantastic original features inherent in such an old building.
The ‘garden’ room, which opens out onto the kitchen garden with its living wall of herbs also has a new bar area for pre-dinner drinks. The ‘kitchen’ room, is one of the new dining rooms, featuring the already sought-after table 11 for four people in a window alcove, and a ‘chef’s table’ for 4-6 diners right by the action in the open kitchen. Two tinted resin screens enclosing birch twigs separate the kitchen from the dining room, although there’s still plenty of space to watch the theatre of the chefs at work.
Upstairs, the wine room offers a further 16 covers in a bright dining room, which offers a view into the new, feature wine-cellar, which the restaurant will be using as the basis for a series of wine dinners. The dining room can also be taken over in its entirety for a private lunch or dinner.
The menu evolves constantly, and currently includes new season asparagus, herb emulsion, smoked and pickled quail eggs, Dorset crab bonbons, crab and lemon dressing; signature dishes such as young beets with Shepton goat’s cheese, beetroot sorbet, lemon thyme, goat’s cheese mousse, rye bread, beetroot powder; fillet of rock salmon, poached crayfish, cauliflower mousse, avruga caviar, pak choi, crayfish foam. Two courses from the dinner menu are priced at £35. Wines are selected to match the style of the menu, and include choices for all pockets.
Laurie and Jacqueline Gear opened the Artichoke in 2002, but it was forced to close after extensive fire damage, and re-opened in 2009. Since then, the restaurant has gone from strength to strength, winning Best New Entry from the Good Food Guide 2011 and a rising star from Michelin 2011. In early 2011, Laurie and Jacqueline bought the lease/freehold of the building next door, ironically where the devastating fire began, and are taking the restaurant another step forward.
The Artichoke, 9 Market Square, Old Amersham, Bucks HP7 0DF.
For more information and table reservations, visit: artichokerestaurant.co.uk
