Matfen Hall launches new spring seasonal menu
LUXURY hotel and country estate Matfen Hall is celebrating the arrival of spring with a brand new seasonal menu.
The leading Northumberland venue has launched a spring à la carte menu in its stylish Cloisters Restaurant and Bar, offering a selection of tasty dishes featuring seasonal and locally-sourced produce.
Dishes include seared beef carpaccio, pan-fried salmon with polenta and roasted gem heart and cauliflower steak with roasted pears and black garlic, with many ingredients sourced and foraged from Matfen Hall’s own gardens and grounds.
Matfen Hall has a big focus on provenance with the estate’s restaurants committed to sourcing fresh local produce and the kitchen team foraging the Matfen garden grounds for ingredients.
Commenting on the spring menu, Head chef, Ernst Van Zyl said:
“The Cloisters brasserie menu is seasonal driven and we’ve updated it accordingly to fit the shift in season. With Mother Nature defrosting and waking up, bringing a whole new array of delicious produce, we aim to utilise the best produce from local farms, suppliers and Matfen’s own grounds. By using fresh, seasonal local ingredients, we are able to develop tantalising dishes for a sensational dining experience.
“We base our menu and dishes on the ingredients and produce that are in season, we’ve seen an uptick in wild garlic on the Matfen Hall gardens, so for the past weeks the kitchen staff have been foraging through the estate’s grounds. Matfen Hall’s menus are constantly evolving. People don’t want to always come back and see the same dishes. We like to think that our guests and visitors grow to love us because every time they come there’s one or two new dishes on the menu so it’s crucial to evolve.”
Cloisters is one of several restaurants at the hotel, which also boasts the Emerald Restaurant – Matfen Hall’s premier dining destination and The Drawing Room – an elegant afternoon tea venue with a harpist playing live on Saturdays. The majority of the produce sourced by the restaurants comes from across the region, adding to the regional flavour of the luxury estate. Most of the meat is sourced from Northumberland and Durham, the seafood comes from the east coast and the North Sea, while the fruit and vegetables tends to come from Northumberland, Yorkshire and Cumbria.
Van Zyl explained how teamwork plays a major role in Matfen Hall kitchens and how he and his team work closely together to develop the menus. “As a chef, it’s impossible to know everything and there’s not one chef on the planet that knows everything. Everyone on the restaurant team has experience from all around the world, bringing an array of skills and ideas. We work in a collaborative manner, bouncing ideas off each other and sharing feedback to ensure we create sensational menus,” he said.
The Cloisters spring menu will be available until mid-June. For more information on Cloisters Restaurant and Bar, please visit: https://matfenhall.com/dine/cloisters-restaurant/