For a town of under four thousand people, Bakewell has an unusual food economy. It is famous for a pudding, it hosts a working livestock market, it sits between two great estates that both run their own inns and farm shops, and it feeds several thousand day trippers a week. The result is a lot of tea rooms, a couple of genuinely serious restaurants, and better raw ingredients than most places this size ever see.
You cannot write about eating in Bakewell without starting here. The Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop on The Square and the Bakewell Tart Shop and Coffee House on Matlock Street are both institutions, both busy and both selling different things — a fact that surprises a great many visitors. The pudding is not the tart, and the tart is not the pudding. Our guide to the difference sorts it out, along with the competing claims about who invented what.
Both shops do proper meals as well as baking, and the queue on a Saturday moves faster than it looks.
Matlock Street, running south from The Square, is the tea room strip: Graze, the Lavender Tea Rooms, Summat and the Bakewell Tart Shop are all within a couple of minutes of each other. The Secret Garden on Water Street is a garden café, and River and Roast on Market Street has built a strong following for coffee.
Out of town, the Aisseford Tea Room at Ashford in the Water is the classic village tea room, four kilometres north-west, and works well as the turning point of a walk.
Bakewell takes this seriously. Catch 22 on Matlock Street and Riverside Fish and Chips — for years known as the Wye Plaice — are the two names, and the correct thing to do is take them down to the river and eat them looking at the weir.
Piedaniel’s on Bath Street is the long-established French restaurant and the place Bakewell books for anniversaries. Restaurant Lovage by Lee Smith, also on Bath Street, is the more recent arrival doing modern tasting-menu cooking and has quickly become the most talked-about kitchen in the town. Between them they give Bakewell a level of cooking that a market town of this size has no particular right to.
Pizzuti Kitchen, tucked into Rutland Square, is small and very well liked, with limited evening opening later in the week — check before you plan around it. The Charleston on Rutland Square covers the middle ground, and Farmers Feast at the Agricultural Business Centre does a carvery, which is exactly the right thing in a livestock market town.
The Rutland Arms on The Square is the town’s coaching inn and has the strongest claim to the pudding’s invention — the story is that a cook there misread a recipe in the 1820s and the accident became a delicacy. The Manners on Haddon Road and the Castle on Castle Street are the other two town pubs, both doing food and both busier than their size suggests on market day.
The best pub eating, though, is in the villages. The Lathkil Hotel at Over Haddon sits above Lathkill Dale with one of the finest pub views in the Peak District. The Ashford Arms at Ashford in the Water was extensively reworked and is now a serious dining pub. The Bull’s Head at Youlgreave is the walkers’ choice. The Pilsley Inn belongs to the Chatsworth estate and sits beside the Chatsworth farm shop. And at the top end, the Cavendish Hotel at Baslow and the Peacock at Rowsley are the two country-house dining rooms of the area.
The Chatsworth Farm Shop at Pilsley is the best food shop in the district by a distance — estate meat, game in season, a butchery, a bakery and a café — and is a destination in its own right. Bakewell’s own butchers and delis are good, and the Monday market brings producers into the town.
For a walk lunch, the combination of a Bakewell bakery and the Chatsworth farm shop is hard to beat.
Thornbridge Brewery is based at Bakewell and is one of the more significant British breweries of the last twenty years; the Thornbridge Estate at Ashford, three kilometres out, runs tours and tastings and is the one bookable experience in Bakewell that visitors consistently rate. Local pubs stock the range as a matter of course.
Beyond the pudding and the tart: Derbyshire oatcakes, which are nothing like the Scottish kind and are best eaten hot with cheese; game from the estates in autumn; Bakewell’s own butchers’ pies; and Hartington’s Stilton and Dovedale blue from the cheese country a little to the west.
Monday is market day and the town is at its fullest. Book if you want a table.
Sunday lunch in the village pubs needs booking, sometimes well ahead — the Lathkil, the Ashford Arms and the Pilsley Inn all fill.
Seasonal closing. Several of the smaller places have restricted opening in winter and midweek, and Pizzuti in particular runs limited hours. Check rather than assume.
Dogs are welcome in most of the pubs and several cafés — the Peak District runs on dog walkers.
A large share of Bakewell meals are eaten sitting on a wall somewhere. The town’s bakeries and butchers are set up for it, and the Chatsworth Farm Shop at Pilsley is the best provisioning stop in the district if you are passing.
On the routes themselves, the useful stops are Hassop Station on the Monsal Trail, which has a café and a bookshop; Monsal Head, where there is a pub at the top of the climb; Over Haddon, for the Lathkil Hotel above the dale; and Ashford in the Water, for the tea room and the Ashford Arms. Beyond those the trail and the dales have nothing at all, which catches people out on the western sections towards Miller’s Dale.
Bakewell fills. On a summer Saturday or a Monday market day, The Square is not a relaxing place to look for lunch. The villages are the answer, and none of them is far: Ashford in the Water four kilometres north-west, Over Haddon three kilometres west above the dale, Youlgreave and Monyash to the south, Pilsley and Baslow on the Chatsworth estate. All have pubs, most do food properly, and all of them are quieter than the town on the days when the town is at its busiest.
The estates give Bakewell a genuinely seasonal food calendar, which is rarer than it should be. Game from the Chatsworth and Haddon shoots appears on menus from autumn through the winter — pheasant, partridge, and venison from the park herds. Spring lamb comes off the limestone plateau. The Wye is a famous trout river, and rainbow and brown trout turn up on local menus in season.
Christmas is a proper event here. Chatsworth dresses the house on a theme each year, Haddon opens for a Christmas market in its courtyard, and the town’s pubs and restaurants book up weeks ahead. If you want a table in December, arrange it in October.
The Lathkil Hotel at Over Haddon for the view, the Ashford Arms for the cooking, the Pilsley Inn for the estate connection. All need booking.
Several places claim the origin, including the Rutland Arms and the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop. There is no settled answer, which is part of the fun.
Yes — Piedaniel’s and Restaurant Lovage, both on Bath Street, are the two.
The Chatsworth Farm Shop at Pilsley, and Bakewell’s own butchers and delis, especially on market day.
On Mondays, on summer weekends and for Sunday lunch, yes.