We are very pleased to announce that we are in The Good Food Guide 2020 edition.
We are described as -“A venerable refuelling point…. serves thumpingly good food with emphatic North Country accent and bags of local pride”.
TheFeathers Inn Team scoops two national awards in one day.
The team are stunned as it was announced they have been awarded two major titles. These awards are from two of the most highly regarded publications. Theawards highlight theFeathers ongoing commitment to creating the regions finest food.
The team is delighted to announce that we are
THE GOOD FOOD GUIDE
TheAward: Best Local Restaurant for the North East 2019
This is a diner-nominated award to celebrate the brilliant contribution that neighbourhood restaurants make to our communities.
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 we celebrate the very finest right across the country.
TheAward: County Dining Pub of the Year 2020
Stocksfield pub the Feathers Inn has more award success
A TYNEDALE pub which has raked in a string of awards in its 11 years in business has added to its collection with two more accolades
The Feathers Inn at Hedley-on-the-Hill, near Stocksfield, has been named Best Local restaurant for the North East 2019 in the Good Food Guide, as well as County Dining Pub of the Year in the Good Pub Guide 2019.
Head chef Rhian Cradock co-owns the restaurant with his wife Helen Greer and the couple found out the news earlier this month. “It was incredible – really amazing,” said Helen.
The couple aren’t strangers to award success, for last year the restaurant was named the best place in the country for a roast dinner, in the Best British Roast Dinner 2017 competition.
In total they have received over 38 national awards and this year marks the 11th time for them winning the County Dining Pub of the year award.
Helen said the pub’s location in the heart of the rural farming community is what she thinks stands them apart.
“We have a very close connection with local suppliers,” she said.
“We buy whole animals and do our own butchery which means we are able to use the whole animal. We change the menu every day in order to do that.
“It’s also better for the environment if we are using local products because we are not transporting food. It’s all part of our commitment to the environment, to be sustainable and support ethical farming.”
As well as its award-winning food, the pub began expanding its offer earlier this year to run cookery classes with its chefs based at Ovingham Middle School.
Feathers Inn serves best roast dinner in Britain
Helen Greer and Rhian Cradock from The Feathers Inn.
THE best roast dinner in Britain can be found at a Stocksfield pub.
To win the fiercely contested title, The Feathers Inn, at Hedley-on-the-Hill, saw off competition from hundreds of pubs across the country.
A judging panel led by renowned food critic Charles Campion were impressed by the Feathers Inn’s roast, with locally reared beef and quality sides such as braised red cabbage, honey glazed parsnips, cauliflower cheese and parsley and mint glazed carrots.
Charles Campion said: “The roast dinner is a signature dish for the whole nation, this is Britain at its very best. At The Feathers they care about their roast dinners and it shows. Yorkshire puddings like savoury clouds; dark rich gravy; perfectly cooked meat from local farms; and shrapnel roasties. We all deserve a local like The Feathers, and we all deserve a roast dinner this good.”
Head chef and owner of Feathers Inn, Rhian Cradock, said: “It’s a monumental achievement and a real crowning jewel in the year The Feathers celebrates its 10th anniversary. Our roast is a real team effort and we’re enormously proud of our talented team for winning this award.”
The Feathers Inn in Hedley on the Hill, Northumberland is well worth the visit says Alastair Gilmour.
By Alastair Gilmour 22 Sep 2011
The name of the village is a giveaway. Hedley on the Hill is reached via a eardrum-popping, second-gear straining clamber from Stocksfield in Northumberland.
Hedley is high and it’s handsome, and like its sole pub – the Feathers Inn – it’s predominantly stone-built and solid. The pub’s owners have recently returned from an awards ceremony clutching the Publican’s Morning Advertiser Great British Pub of the Year 2011 title, having emerged victorious from the gastropub category. Until four years ago, the Feathers had been in the same ownership for three decades, serving its community as the retreat that befits a former drovers’ inn – but it needed a 21st-century push.
This it got from Rhian Cradock, a locally reared chef with experience at Chez Bruce and the National Portrait Gallery in London, and his partner Helen Greer. Out went the standard keg beers and lagers and in came four cask-conditioned ales, alongside a menu with its base in Northumbrian produce and a wine list dripping with bordeaux not normally found in pubs.
The three-roomed Feathers divides naturally into bar, lounge and dining areas with no formal demarcation. Huge fireplaces and stacked logs form a focus while framed monochrome photographs of the pub’s suppliers – such as Graham Willie with his pedigree Longhorns – offset stone-wall austerity.
Beer-wise, our single-hop Newcastle Pioneer Bitter from Hadrian Border Brewery is an afternoon delight; its lemon and grapefruit sharpness taken down a peg or two by a gathering of biscuit malt. Another handpull promises Mordue Workie Ticket, a former champion beer of Britain, while the “standard” lager is the mighty Pilsner Urquell, the original pilsner style from the Czech Republic.
An eclectic collection of cookery books catch the eye, The National Trust Book of Pies in particular, while Fergus Henderson’s Nose to Tail Eating reveals stuffed lambs’ hearts draped in streaky bacon as someone’s oft-consulted favourite. This sense of adventure influences the menu, with the likes of Stanhope moor grouse and Hedley Angus beef pudding with port and Guinness, creamed cabbage, bacon, mash and watercress (£15), or North Sea lobster, wild cep mushrooms, broad beans and Northumberland heritage potatoes (£13).
It’s said you can see four counties from Hedley on the Hill – we’re standing in Northumberland; one way is Cumbria, the other Tyne & Wear. County Durham’s dales loll behind.
The view and the Feathers Inn’s surroundings are – as the folks who live on the hill say – just champion.
