While searching along unlit, winding byroads for Another Place, Ullswater’s new multimillion-pound “lifestyle hotel”, I realised that I’ll always feel conflicted when the Lake District tries to do “modern” hospitality. The lion’s share of Lakeland hotels are a paean to chintz, antimacassars and joy-free service, and they’re this way for a reason. Most are family-owned, decaying piles on fellsides, and battered by sideways sleet for 10 months of the year. Most require umpteen million quids’ worth of love to modernise to a standard anything a Soho House member could tolerate. And most are in the hands of locals lacking the nerve or impetus to modernise, yet simultaneously furious when tourists want keto-friendly avo toast with fast wifi to document their soft southern faces scoffing it.
Yes, the Lakes has The Samling, The Forest Side, L’Enclume and a few other Michelin-chasing, artsy-fartsy spots, but this level of vision is rare and, crucially, there is no middle ground. While Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire is cluttered daily with moneyed millennials and fancy families riding bikes, drinking Old Tom martinis and eating vegan wood-roasted cauliflower with roscoff onion, my home county Cumbria draws a blank. Another Place – stupid, confusing name, if you ask me – is an attempt to fill the gap, transforming the snoozesome Rampsbeck Hotel into a 40-room mini-resort with a spa, 20m pool, plus the option of kayaking and sailing on the lake. Oh, and wild swimming – the new cool, southern term for doing the breaststroke anywhere that doesn’t smell of anti-verruca disinfectant.
Decor is vague Scandi-chic and sub-Hamptons glamour blended with a touch of former Georgian grandeur, and it pulls together prettily. The Instagram Stasi would like it, but I’m not sure they’d find much to nom-nom about in the two dining options – The Living Space or the more formal Rampsbeck restaurant. We ate in the Rampsbeck, where the menu is largely yesteryear Britannia: Herdwick lamb, Morecambe Bay shrimp and Lakeland beef.
Alarm bells go off when the sample menu online lists vegetarian crumble as the sole main-course nod to “free-from” eating. Let me get this straight: you want people to drive somewhere so out of the way even local taxis can’t find it, and to pay hundreds of quid for a weekend, yet expect them to assemble evening meals out of side dishes of “chunky chips” and “wedge salad – hold the Caesar dressing”? At dinner, it’s the death of a thousand paper cuts. And I want it to be great. Come on, Cumbria, we can do this.
Still, an old fashioned arrives resembling a half-pint of Irn-Bru. It is, says the menu, an aperitif, although the concept of dallying over a pre-dinner drink means nothing to the servers, who bang up to our table time and again to ask for our order. It’s 7.30pm. The place is dead. The chef is possibly whining to go home because this is the Lake District and, at this rate, he’ll be cooking later than 9pm. Brand new hotel, same old vibe.
A shallot tarte tatin is a stodgy affair, with no depth or ochre hue to the onion. It arrives on undressed rocket, which for me is just trolling. Very year-10 home ec. A pleasantly cured piece of salmon is titivated with a halved, boiled potato and some soft-boiled egg. It’s all just fine – but then, I can leave in an hour; some people are here for a week. A main of pan-fried hake appears on a smear of pomme puree with an odd albeit tasty, vomity-looking puddle of ceps and autumn veg. But a beef cheek is stewed tenderly and served with black pudding and cavolo nero.
Nothing on offer, aside from the tatin, is terrible, but you can eat better and cheaper than this in several nearby pubs, and without antibacterial spray being scooshed across nearby tables while you eat, or servers thinking it’s OK to deliver dishes straight into your hands. Go to The Pheasant Inn on Crosthwaite Road in Keswick instead. Actually, don’t. You’re the last people I want to see when I’m making my way through a bottle of rioja with a farting labrador under the table.
Our puddings are one of those melting-middle chocolate tortes I’m bored to death with and, for the health-conscious, a slab of grilled pineapple so tough one could have greeted it enthusiastically only if it was a hot day, you were in London Zoo and you were a hippopotamus.
I’m still conflicted about the Lake District trying to be hip, and it’s clear some people are keen. They’re just really rather bad at it.
• Another Place The Lake, Watermillock, Ullswater, Cumbria, 01768 486442. Open all week, dinner only 6.30-9pm (last orders). £40 a head for three courses and two sides, plus drinks and service.
Food 2/10
Atmosphere 2/10
Service 2/10
