Our Food

Our passion lies in finding quality ingredients and preparing, cooking and presenting them in a modern but unpretentious way.

Our menus have a spine of fresh, seasonal, classic British dishes complemented by more exotic influences from other parts of the world. Each pubs menu is different and is uploaded to their website each morning before 12 noon so that you may peruse them at your leisure to whet your appetite.

Local Gluten Free Menus

Each of our pubs offer a wide range of gluten free dishes. Most of our sauces, gravies and dressings have been gluten free for many years. But we have been working with Coeliac UK in order to develop recipes for pastries, flapjacks, shortbreads and the like in order to offer more and more gluten free options.

We adopted Coeliac UK’s training for all of our Managers and Head Chefs along with our already robust training in order to give our teams the knowledge and confidence in this area and we are thrilled to have been awarded Coeliac UK’s accreditation.

Simply look out for two symbols next to dishes on our Daily Menu; gf – gluten free and gfa – which denotes a dish that could easily be adapted to make it gluten free if you ask your server.

Latest Food News

Junior Chef Competition

December 2024

A look back at this year’s Junior Chef Competition in late Summer, hosted beautifully by Cheshire College near our offices in Ellesmere Port.

Each year we invite our Junior Chefs to team up with a ‘Front of House’ friend from their pub to take part in a competition. The finalists went along to Cheshire College East and West to compete.

Round One was to follow a dish spec exactly (think Great British Bake Off without the gingham!) and then (after a wonderful lunch provided by the college student chefs) Round Two encouraged ‘free style’, by giving the contestants free rein of the larder to devise their own main and pudding.

Such a great day and Emily and Callum from the Horse and Groom are this year’s well-deserved Champions (but they are all rising stars!). Here is a film that shows you the whole day (lots of chopping, stirring, eating and Managers looking nervous for their offspring!)

Food Development Awards

Every year we run a competition across all of our pubs to crown creators of the best dishes. Each pub enters a junior chef and front of house partnership to represent them in our company wide competition to develop and reward our rising stars.

At the grand finals in September the teams of two are challenged with two rounds. The first stage begins with a tray of identical ingredients and an unseen spec for each team. They have 1½ hours to prep, cook and present the dish following the spec precisely. In true ‘Great British Bake Off’ style each team places their finished starter behind a card with their name, leaving our panel of judges, Tom, Mary and Mike to compare, contrast and then pick the top three.

The idea of this task is to show that consistency, accuracy and replication need to be cornerstones of our food offer.

The second task gives each team free range to choose from an amazing larder of ingredients: guinea fowls, rabbits, pork and venison loins, lobsters, whole fish, racks of lamb (too many things to mention).

Each team has 3 hours to devise a main course and a pudding using their imagination and creativity.

It’s fair to say that the 2023 finals brought with it a consistently high standard of cooking. It was especially pleasing to see how all the team’s balanced originality and innovation whilst keeping in mind our overall food style. Margins were very close, but Sutton Hall’s Steve and Cat were crowned this year’s overall winners.

All the finalists win a prize for their efforts and the winners are taken on a fantastic culinary experience.

We owe Cheshire South & West College huge thanks for hosting us fantastically well at their Ellesmere Port Campus and Royal Greenland for their kind sponsorship.