About us

A print works, a wood oven, and a fairly stubborn idea

The building printed newspapers for eighty years and then sat empty for eleven. When we took it on in 2019 the floor was still stained with ink and the skylights were painted over. We scrubbed the floor, uncovered the glass, and left more or less everything else alone.

The oven went in first, before the kitchen was built around it. That was the stubborn part — a wood-fired oven is difficult, slow, and impossible to turn down when a table of six orders at once. But food cooked over oak tastes of something that gas cannot fake, and once you have eaten it that way it is hard to go back.

So the menu is short. It changes when the delivery changes. Some nights we run out of the good thing by nine. We have made our peace with that, and mostly, so have you.

The dining room with copper extraction hoods over the open kitchen

How we work

One fire, no gas

Everything is cooked over a single oak-burning oven. It is lit at four and left to die down. Nothing is reheated.

Whole animals, whole fish

We buy the lot and use the lot. It is why the menu is short and why it moves — the fourth course depends on what is left of the first.

One sitting a night

Twenty-eight covers, booked once. We would rather serve fewer people properly than turn the room twice.

Who cooks

Daniel Enwright

Chef and owner

Twelve years in other people's kitchens, most of them too bright. Opened this one to cook over fire and turn the lights down.

Tom Beaumont

Head chef

Runs the oven and the ordering. Buys the whole animal, then works out the menu backwards from it.