Craig Sherrington got four perfect tens from judges in the final of BBC’s Great British Menu 2018 but narrowly missed out on victory. His four-course GBM menu is being served for several months at this restaurant-with-rooms and gin bar. A small-plate tasting menu and an à la carte brasserie menu are offered too. For the fish course, In It for the Long Trawl (awarded 10/10): ‘head to’ Morecambe Bay for seared mackerel, pickled cockles, brown shrimps, and samphire. For the main course, A Sense of Occasion: tuck into salt-aged fillet of Penny Bridge Dexter beef, with pithivier of shin beef and ceps, British truffle, and truffle oil.

Take a food tour of the world while dining in Grasmere’s joyful and quirky Jumble Room, Andy and Chrissy Hill’s restaurant which they opened in 1996 in what was once a junk room. For mains they offer the likes of siomai dim sum parcels, filled with pork and Morecambe bay shrimps (with a touch of ginger); local lamb rump, rubbed in rose harissa and Persian spices; and Malayan seafood curry, with chunks of fresh fish and Madagascan black tiger prawns, coddled in the restaurant’s spiced Asian broth. Back to Britain for good old fish and chips, a big favourite. 

Check out the large paintings downstairs, the jazz photographs upstairs and the album covers in the loos. And for luxury in the Lakes, try the couple’s B&B called Randy Pike (www.randypike.co.uk).

A cross between a biscuit and a cake, pale and crumbly in appearance but chewy on the inside, the gingerbread is made to the same recipe which Grasmere cook Sarah Nelson used in 1854 when she first opened her shop to locals and visitors. Only sold here and online, it’s one of those foods — along with Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding (www.cartmelvillageshop.co.uk), traditional Cumberland sausage, Herdwick lamb, and damsons from the Lyth and Winster valleys — that have become almost as familiar as the names of Windermere, Derwentwater, Helvellyn, and Scafell Pike. 

The whitewashed walls and flagstoned floors of poet William Wordsworth’s old office building provides a fitting setting for Ryan Blackburn’s Cumbrian-sourced-and-inspired food. One well-known London chef who ate here apparently told him it was the greatest meal he’d ever eaten “for knowing where he was.” Go for the seven-course tasting menu for a trip around Cumbria, cooked by a ‘friend of farmers, fish merchants and foragers.’ There might be Ravenglass crab, Morecambe Bay brown shrimps, Whitehaven turbot, grouse from Alston Moor, venison from Ullswater, or roe deer from the Cartmel Valley. Not to miss is Herdwick hogget from Yew Tree Farm near Coniston, the Herdwick being the native sheep breed of the Lake District; the farm once owned by author Beatrix Potter. A nearby café called Kysty is in the same ownership.

“Hyper-seasonal, cool climate cooking” perfectly encapsulates the food-sourcing ethic of chef James Cross but the brevity of the phrase only hints at the exceptional meals, served in this 19-seat restaurant. There’s a stripped down, vaguely Scandinavian feel to its interior, so no real distraction from savouring what Cross intends to be “one of the best meals” of diners’ lives. His protein heavy five- or eight-course tasting menus — a 12-course one is available too — might encompass muntjac deer from Scotland, lobster from Norway, and Herdwick lamb and veal short rib from the Lake District. Bergen steamed halibut with beurre monté sauce (based on one of five house-made misos) and the 120-day-aged Blue Grey beef, barbecued in the kitchen in front of your eyes and served with black truffle oil, are a couple of dishes to look out for. Cool climate cooking? The warmth is in the welcome and in the deep contentment of dining here.

An atmospheric old building beside the small River Eea in Cartmel is the home of Simon Rogan’s ‘relaxed neighbourhood restaurant’. Rogan & Co got its first Michelin star in October 2018 and while it may be a different beast from L’Enclume — with à la carte two- and three-course menus rather than tastings — the commitment to flavour and invention is every bit as intense. Much produce comes from the Rogan farm/garden in Cartmel and further afield in the county so, for a perfect four-course meal, diners might go for a snack of lamb croquette and damson, a wood pigeon and beetroot starter, a main course of aged short rib of beef, and a dessert of dark chocolate fondant and apple marigold custard. The lunch menu here is great value.

The 2015 BBC2 series Chefs on Trial brought Hrishikesh Desai to Gilpin and it was his early life spent in India that now imbues the Michelin-starred food here with the tastes of south Asia. Choose from a three-course menu or seven-course ‘Inspirations from Kerala’ tasting (until March 2019). That signature tasting menu includes crispy soft-shelled crab ‘Kochi Thatukkadas’ style, sweet and sour Bombay mix, and smoked celeriac, pollichathu-marinated Norfolk quail, courgette-crusted Atlantic halibut, and fillet of Buccleuch farm beef with a red wine khozambu. 

Dinner only.

Who’d have thought there’d be any connection between 18th century Whitehaven — on Cumbria’s west coast — and a luxury Lake District hotel? But thanks to head chef Hrishikesh Desai and the heritage of Whitehaven’s spice trade, Gilpin Hotel has a memorable and exuberantly furnished alternative to its Michelin-starred restaurant, Hrishi. Pan-Asian dishes come in small and big sharing plate size, with snacks like pain puri (puff balls filled with chickpea curry), soups or flatbreads (like Barbary duck) to kick off. Saddleback pork belly and marinated whole fish of the day are the pick of the mains. As with Hrishi, there’s an ‘Inspirations from Kerala’ tasting menu (on until March 2019), this time with the likes of sea bream pollichathu, tharavu mappas (braised duck), and lamb biryani and sambar. No Grasmere gingerbread for dessert, but Grasmere gingerbread is something else to thank the Whitehaven spice trade for.