Casual Dining Restaurant of the Year: Great Food Club Awards 2020
Winner
House of Feasts, Eye Green, Peterborough
Finalists
Hitchen’s Barn, Oakham, Rutland
Boboli, Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire
Bar Iberico, Nottingham
The winner is House of Feasts in the village of Eye Green near Peterborough, which impressed with its take on modern Polish cuisine.
Chef-patron Damian Wawrzyniak shows drive and passion to showcase a largely unknown and underrated European cuisine, giving it a modern twist using local ingredients.
It’s not all boiled potatoes and dumplings at House of Feasts – far from it. Damian takes the best of Polish cuisine and modernises and refines it with dishes such as Royal Smalec (as served to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge), and Cambridgeshire Organic Pork Belly Hong Kong-style. The pork is brined with soy, cooked with orange, star anise and honey, fermented apples and marjoram.
Sunday lunches are a big hit at House of Feasts and we enjoyed the ham hock – brined and cooked in beer and served with roasted Cambridgeshire potatoes and vegetables. This was followed by aerated chocolate mousse with whipped cream, cocoa, preserved red currants and salted caramel.
Hitchen’s Barn of Oakham served us a delicious main of sea trout with new potatoes, samphire and brown shrimp.
Bar Iberico in the bustling centre of Nottingham wowed us with some tasty tapas, including ‘Josperised’ bream with caramelised lemon and green sauce.
Boboli in the peaceful backwaters of Kibworth Harcourt served us a main of rolled neck of lamb.