” Thumpingly good food with an emphatic North Country accent and bags of local pride” The Good Food Guide

Fine British food, in a traditional setting, at a reasonable price.

We are a free house that cares about the welfare of livestock and the condition in which they are reared. By using local produce, we take into consideration animal welfare whilst also improving the flavour and taste of the food dramatically.

We invest in the region by using locally sourced suppliers. It is important to us where food comes from and that it is sustainable, with a reduction in “food miles”.

When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England

Hillaire Belloc

Trust in provenance

We are explicitly open and publicise the provenance, food miles and animal husbandry of our menus. Our menu lists the source of key ingredients and goes much further than merely stating that the chop is from a rare breed such as middle white. We list the farm where the animal was raised. Traceability is very important to us and we value to the work that goes into rearing and creating the food on our plates.

My food is most definitely based upon classical and regional French cooking. I find inspriation in the books of Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Mark Hix and Fergus Henderson (St. John London).

I also love mediterranean flavours from Spain, Italy and also North Africa. You will find old fashioned stews, pies and suet puddings alongside delicious offal preparations and lighter, simply grilled fish and meat alternatives on the menu. I favour simply plated but immaculately prepared desserts too.

We are very proud of our Northumbrian cheese board at The Feathers Inn and when it is brought out it always impresses.

Rhian Cradock

An ethical business

At The Feathers Inn, we believe passionately that the success of our business lies in the importance of high ethical standards to be practised at all levels. Food tastes better in season.

Local produce is better to eat and better for the environment.

Our buying policy

We source all our food ethically and responsibly -Our menu changes on a twice daily basis which reflects our small scale artisan producers, suppliers and foragers. We speak to our farmers daily and build our menu around what is best and what is available at that time.

We source the majority of our food and drink from our region. Almost all our produce with is grown, reared, foraged and caught in the North East The provenance and animal husbandry of our suppliers is very important to us and we regularly visit our famers and get to understand their business. We support heritage produce and rare breed animals.

We are flexible as farming is never straight forward and not an exact science.

Awards

The team are delighted to announce two awards for 2019

THE GOOD FOOD GUIDE

Best Local Restaurant for the North East 2019

This is a diner-nominated Best Local Restaurant award to celebrate the brilliant contribution that neighbourhood restaurants make to our communities.

THE GOOD PUB GUIDE

County Dining Pub Of the Year 2019

Every year the editors of the Good Pub Guide take the opportunity to rate the very finest Dining Pubs across Great Britain. The rise of the Dining Pub over the past 20 years has been one of the key features of the industry – and here they celebrate the very finest right across the country.

Find out more about our awards.

Animal welfare

The quality of the product is at the very heart of everything we do. Animal welfare is an essential aspect of ensuring quality.

Our farmers work together with us to ensure we bring to the customer the finest food possible by using the greenest and animal welfare friendly methods.

We only work with farmers who put the welfare of their animal’s first and show care and attention to their needs. We know how it was slaghtered and how it was butchered.

We hope by using British Rose veal we are helping to raise awareness of this as a compassionate and viable source of meat and prevent the cruelty of shooting at birth male calves. We support Compassion’s Calf life – wanted not wasted campaign. We hope to work with these farms to increase the awareness of this meat as an ethical product and encourage more people to try and support British Rose veal.

Our fish policy

We have an extremely strict fish buying policy – we never buy endangered species or fish in its breeding season.

The fishermen we work with come from small fishing communities on the North East coasts, and they only use sustainable methods of landing their catch from day boats, using lines, pots, creels or divers.

We’ve been using lesser-known species of non-endangered fish for many years, such as gurnard, Pollack and razor clams. They benefit from plentiful stock levels, and by using these fish this takes pressure off the depleted stocks of endangered fish such as cod and haddock.

Lobster and crabs are all soured from day boats in the North Sea landed at Sunderland and North shields, deliver to the pub the next day. The lobsters are dispatched by cutting them in half down the middle, crab are killed prior to boiling by inserting a steel into their abdominal cavity on their underbelly.

We follow closely the listings on the marine stewardship council website to ensure we are not using any fish that may be threatened. This for example has led to the removal of British eel from our menus. For full details of what we will and won’t purchase, see the Marine Conservation Society’s list.

All our fish suppliers have guaranteed to adhere to our fish buying policy guidelines.

This is the back of our menu. We use over 60 local suppliers and only a few are mentioned here.
The North East has clearly some of the finest producers in the counrty and we are very fortunate to be able to count on many as customers and as friends.It is the quality of the produce that enables us to produce the food that we do and it is to them that we owe thanks.

Here are some of our suppliers:

• Ravensworth Grange Farm • Ann Gray  • Ravensworth Grange, Kibblesworth , Gateshead, NE11 0HX
• Gilchesters Organics Ltd Organic stone ground flour • Andrew Wilkinson •  Gilchesters Farm Hawkwell Stamfordham, Northumberland NE18 0QL • www.gilchesters.com
• Doddington Dairy Limited • Elaine/Margyy Maxwell  • North Doddington Farm, Wooler, Northumberland NE71 6AN
• Carroll’s Heritage Potatoes Ltd. • Anthony and Lucy Carroll •   Tiptoe Farm, Cornhill-on-Tweed, Northumberland TD12 4XD • www.heritage-potatoes.co.uk
• Lindisfarne Oysters • Christopher and Helen Sutherland West House, Ross Farm, Belford, Northumberland NE70 7EN
• Northumbrian Pedigree milk and eggs • Paul Baynes •  Marley Cote Walls, Slaley, Hexham, Northumberland NE47 0DQ • www.northumbrianpedigree.com
• Cranstons • John Lowman • Ullswater Road, Penrith, Cumbria CA11 7EH
• Southlands Farm Dexter Beef . Charles and Dee McGowan at Southlands Farm Cottages. Gunnerton, Near Hexham, Northumberland NE48 4EA +44 (0) 1434 681 464 enquiries@southlandsfarmcottages.co.uk www.southlandsfarmcottages.co.uk