Diners are really spoilt for choice with three restaurants

0 Comments | Nottingham Evening Post, Jul 16, 2010

SIT in the Blue Room for long enough and you might be tempted to look around for the nearest bell to ring for your valet. Housed in one of Thoresby Hall’s high-ceilinged staterooms, the restaurant looks out over the park grounds.

Beyond manicured hedges is the Thoresby Hall cricket pitch, and beyond that the little lake.

Just off the Blue Room you’ll find the library, all wood- panelling and brown leather, with books spanning more than a century and a huge globe that looks as if it should direct you to places such as Ceylon.

Beyond that sits the small bar and a room where portraits of Pierreponts look down on you as you indulge in a game of billiards.

This is high living of a bygone age. If Bertie Wooster came running past looking for a cow creamer, he wouldn’t look out of place.

But you don’t have to know the right people – or have a harebrained scheme from which your valet will have to extricate you – to get a Blue Room invite these days.

This north Notts treasure, just up the road from Ollerton and now a Warner Leisure resort hotel, is also home to three unique restaurants.

One, that gloriously resplendent Blue Room, does high-end British food in opulent surroundings.

Down the stairs, Fenocchi’s serves up Italian cuisine in the stately home’s atmospheric old wine cellar with vaulted ceiling.

And around the corner, Pierreponts offers straightforward fare under a modern-addition glass ceiling.

Executive head chef Andrew Soddy overseas all three restaurants. He’s been at Thoresby for just two months and he’s getting used to tea and scones one minute, tiramisu the next.

“It’s an interesting job. It’s quite challenging,” he says. “I’m impressed by the diversity of all the restaurants.”

Andrew’s previous work includes a stint with celeb chef Gary Rhodes.

He knows about AA rosettes, and for that matter, Michelin stars, and one of his goals for Thoresby is to build on the high-end restaurant’s already excellent reputation.

“The Blue Room is our fine dining restaurant and it’s a fabulous restaurant,” he says.

It now boasts two rosettes, he notes, and he wants to push towards three.

On a typical day, Andrew does plenty of walking between the various kitchens. At midday he often drops in on Fenocchi’s, where the fresh Italian bread is made on site.

In the mid-afternoon, he tries to check in on a favourite Blue Room tradition – high tea.

Pierreponts, meanwhile, is busy all day as it also serves as the resort’s breakfast area.

Those different culinary experiences in such a small area make up one of Thoresby’s great advantages, Andrew reckons.

“It’s great to sample all the different kinds of cuisine you can have,” he says. “On a weekend away, you usually can’t do that.”

It’s also great to be able to stroll in the woods and across the fields that much of the food recently called home.

Warner Leisure runs the resort in agreement with the Pierrepont family, which keeps control of the estate and maintains farming on the grounds
valet parking