Menus at the Hardwick

<-- Please feel free to browse our menus using links in the side-bar.

A menu should give you a good indication to what the particular establishment you are in or thinking of visiting is trying to be and achieve, from content to wording to design.

A menu is my shop window, it echoes my philosophy of food and is my culinary mission statement.

A menu should be easy to read and understand. Descriptions should be concise and informative. A customer will generally take a few words or seconds to decide whether they like a dish or not and move onto the next. So it is important to keep it to the point and not go off on some mad creative writing exercise as is often the case with too many menus.

I believe in offering plenty of choice. There is nothing worse than having to choose the dish you dislike the least from a menu that’s content is limited. At the Hardwick the choice is almost ridiculous for the size of the restaurant. This doesn’t make for an easy life but it works and customers enjoy visiting for old favourites and new dishes alike. We can’t be all things to all people but I think that there is something for most people on our menu.

From Ham, Egg and Chips to a beautiful piece of roasted Gower Peninsula Sea Bass, the quality of ingredients are equal. There are many chefs of my background who would have sleepless nights at the thought of serving the former but that is the essence of the Hardwick, simple food cooked well. A thick slice of pan fried, home cooked ham with a fried local organic egg and triple cooked chips, made famous by Heston Blumenthal. It doesn’t get any better. That’s if you like ham, egg and chips!

One of the many pleasures of living outside the Big Smoke is that I now live a lot closer and often at the source of produce that features on the Hardwick menus. It is easy to take for granted in London, and most major cities, that you can pick up the phone and order pretty much anything you want to be delivered the following morning, but imagine how wonderful it is to go to some of my producers directly and choose my own produce alongside them. Then cooking their own produce for them at the Hardwick, where they are credited on the menu. For me it’s about building close relationships with incredibly, passionate people because ultimately the Hardwick is only as good as the produce it uses.

Stephen Terry - March 2008