I know it’s the Lake District, but believe it or not we can have beautiful summers! If you’ve read the last blog from our Chef, you’ll know we have launched a rather tasty “summer” terrace menu here at the Beech Hill Hotel. We are also thinking about an evening barbeque menu that we will run mainly on Friday and Saturday nights during the summer. I know we’ll need the weather on our side but honestly, we do have some great days (and nights!)

The terrace is the perfect place for this because it’s in full sun right through the afternoon and stays in the sun until it goes down, sometimes as late as 10 o’clock! Plenty of time then to kick back with a cocktail and something fresh off the Barbie!

Check us out on facebook where you’ll see that some of you have already told us about some of your favourite dishes of all time! Our chef has seen some really unusual ones and it’s great to see the different combinations people put together!

We’d love to hear what it is you enjoy most when its cooked on the BBQ, personally, I don’t think you can go to far wrong with line caught sea bass, cooked with fresh herbs, a wedge of lemon and just a little butter, put everything in a simple foil parcel and wait for perfection! I think I’ve just decided what’s for dinner this evening!

So follow us on facebook, leave us as many ideas as you like and give your idea of the “perfect” Barbeque! You never know, you could end up reading someone’s favourite dish and cooking it yourself, enjoy!

Jonathan Allan

General Manager

Our healthy, tasty new children’s menu!

Children are of course “little people” I myself own two of these “little people” so know a bit about what makes them function more efficiently!

I’ve spent a lot of time working with our Chef developing our children’s menu using my own experiences and that of my colleagues (who just happen to be parents as well!) I wanted something that really worked on all levels. Feeding my children, fresh (and organic where possible) food is hugely important to me and I like to try and continue this even when I’m away from home. I wanted to make sure here at the hotel that was possible for those of you with families.

This meant creating dishes that were not only healthy and well balanced, but dishes that children would actually enjoy choosing and of course eating! In fact some of the dishes are just as I make them for my own children at home. Of course here they are created by a team of award winning chef’s and ok, I don’t quite put fish that was landed a day or so ago in my fish pie, but you see what I mean! The point is we all want our kids to eat their meals without feeling like we’re torturing them at the same time!

In some hotels and restaurants the children’s menu seems to have been an after thought. You quite often get smaller portions of the main menu (where’s the thought in that!)  Or it’s simply everything and anything with fries! At the Beech Hill we’ve certainly tried to taken a different approach.

For me, this is as important as our main menu. We use fresh, local ingredients to produce a balanced menu that children of all ages can enjoy. Dishes are cooked to order and so it’s not simply transferring something from the freezer to the oven!

We have a copy of our children’s menu on our site so please do take the time to look over it and if you have any suggestions or comments I’d be more than happy to hear them.

Jonathan

General Manager

Well the new website has finally gone live! It’s been a while in the making but we all feel it’s been well worth the wait! Personally I think it’s great, I’m sure you agree. A lot of time, thought and effort has gone in to it and it’s been designed very much with you in mind.

It has so much more to offer, we’ve added more content, more fantastic pictures and some very tempting special offers! Please do take the time to look through the site, I particularly like the “events calendar”. This is a great tool and allows you to see all the exciting events happening both in the hotel and around the Lake District throughout the year. Not only that, click on the event your interested in and you can see all the information on it instantly! Then all you have to do is click to check availability, how easy is that!

I hope to be able to tell one or two interesting stories as the months go by as well as keeping you all informed on what’s going on in the area. We already have plans to refurbish some of our Classic bedrooms and we are currently decorating a number of corridors. Thanks again to those of you who have stayed with us recently for bearing with us whilst some of this work takes place. It really is great to see the improvements and the feedback from guests has been incredibly positive!

Don’t forget you can now follow us on twitter (where you’ll catch fantastic last minute deals) and keep an eye out for new posts on the Hotel’s Blog!

Jonathan Allan

General manger