Over flame, or not at all.
Live-fire cooking, low light and a long bar. Everything that can touch the embers, does. Walk in for the counter; book for a table.
One hearth. Everything touches it.
There’s no gas line in our kitchen. There’s a hearth built from firebrick and blackened steel, a bed of oak embers that gets raked from 3pm, and a crew who have learned to read both. Smoke is a seasoning here, applied with the same care as salt.
The menu moves with what the fire and the season give us. Whole fish, charred greens, flatbreads blistered to order, and a bar that leans into smoke and bitterness as hard as the plates do.
The ones people come back for.
Written at half four. Gone when it’s gone.
The printed menu is the spine. The board is what turned up this morning: the fish off the day boat, the cut the butcher had two of, whatever the market garden picked before eight. It changes every day and it runs out.
Bar special · smoked plum sour £10
Sit at the counter and watch it burn.
Twelve stools at the pass, first come first served. A long bar under the beams. Booths in the back for the ones who want to talk. After ten the lights drop and the room runs on candles and coals.
“We booked again on the way out. That’s the review.”
What people say
Sat at the counter on a Tuesday, ate the hispi cabbage and the bavette, drank something orange the bartender recommended. Left smelling of woodsmoke and very happy.
Booked the Oak Room for my dad’s 70th. They set the menu with us over the phone, sorted three allergies without fuss, and the whole fish came out on a board the length of the table.
The smoked old fashioned is worth the trip alone. The flatbread with dripping is worth a second trip. Go before it gets impossible to book.
Example reviews
Bring everyone.
Six at the chef’s counter with the hearth in front of you. Sixteen in the Oak Room behind its own door. Twenty-four down one table in the main room. Feasts are set family-style, priced per head, and the fire does the entertaining.
Two minutes from the Market Place.
3 Tanners Yard
Loughborough LE11
Two minutes from the Market Place, through the arch beside the old tannery. The glow in the window is the hearth.
Checking the clock
Kitchen last orders: 9.30pm midweek, 10pm Friday and Saturday, 8pm Sunday. Walk-ins for the counter and bar, always.
Pull up a seat.
Counter seats are walk-in. For a table, a booth or the Oak Room, book below. We hold a few tables back every night for the phone.