It started as a fire pit behind a pub.
Sunday afternoons, a half-barrel of coals, whatever the butcher had left. People kept turning up. Four years later there’s a hearth, a bar and a room, and the same rule: if it can go over the fire, it does.
Built by a blacksmith, fed by hand.
The hearth is three metres of firebrick and blackened steel, made for us by a smith in the Vale of Belvoir who’d never built one before and now builds nothing else. Three grill heights on a chain and wheel, a hot plate at one end, an ash pit that gets emptied at 1am.
It burns oak and ash, coppiced from a woodland near Melton, split and seasoned for a year in the shed at the end of the yard. Coals are ready by 4pm. Nothing is cooked before then; nothing goes on the menu that can’t take smoke.
Dan, who runs the pass, says the fire has a mood and you cook to it. Some nights it wants steak. Some nights it wants cabbage. He’s usually right.
Four years, in order.
The fire pit
A half-barrel of coals in a pub garden on the edge of town, Sundays only. Bavette, flatbreads, a cool box of beer. By August there was a queue at eleven in the morning.
The yard
The old tannery yard came up for lease. Six months of rubble, a hearth that arrived on a flatbed, and the bar built from the beams that came out of the roof. Opened on a Tuesday in November with 40 covers and no sign.
The counter
Twelve stools went in at the pass because people kept standing there watching. The Oak Room opened at Christmas. The natural wine list went from eight bottles to forty.
Now
Sixteen of us. A board that changes every day. Sunday roasts that sell out by four. Still no gas, still no sign on the street; you follow the smoke.
Sixteen of us, one fire.
Eleven years in kitchens in Leeds and Copenhagen, then home to Leicestershire to cook the way his grandad did on a Sunday. Reads the fire like weather.
Writes the board at half four every day from what’s turned up. Owns the fish. Will not let a mackerel go out that isn’t blistered.
Runs the room and every private booking. If you ring about a party, you’ll get Mags, and she’ll remember your name in March.
Smoke, bitters, orange peel set on fire. Built the smoked old fashioned in week one and hasn’t been allowed to take it off since.
Who we buy from.
Small, close, and on first-name terms. Most of them eat here on a Sunday.
Ferrow Hill Longhorns
A herd of about sixty on the ridge above Long Whatton. Grass and hay, nothing else. Whole animals, hung 45 days in our own cold room, so the board gets the cuts a wholesaler would never send.
Marlow Fold Market Garden
Four acres and two polytunnels outside Barrow upon Soar. Whatever is picked before eight is on the board by five. The hispi, the gem, the beetroot, the plums from the tree by their gate.
And the rest
Fish from a day boat out of Brixham, driven up overnight. Flour from a mill on the Trent for the flatbreads. Beer brewed for us in Leicestershire. Coffee roasted in Nottingham. Wine from people who pick by hand and don’t add much after.
“If it can go over the fire, it does. If it can’t, it isn’t on the menu.”
Come and see the fire.
Counter seats look straight onto the hearth and they’re walk-in. For a table, book below.