We’re reopening our Calvert’s Restaurant with a new bistro-style menu!

Our ‘Taste of England’ silver award-winning Calvert’s Restaurant, at our Visitor Centre is reopening its doors on Wednesday 8^th July for the first time since lockdown, bringing with it a brand-new bistro-style menu, as well as a new executive chef, Oliver Bennett.

With fantastic local produce and dishes inspired by our artisan cheese range, Oliver has ambitions to further elevate the food offering, championing the finest local ingredients and bringing inspiring new flavour combinations – including the introduction of small & large plates.

You may recognise Oliver, as he took centre stage in our recent live online cookery demonstrations, which ran throughout May and June on Facebook where we showcased the latest recipe inspiration as part of the ‘Crumble It!’ campaign, the demonstrations highlighted the versatility of our creamy, crumbly cheese, to elevate the specialness of dishes.

Oliver’s early career started in Scotland, working at the world-famous Browns flagship restaurant. Before taking ownership of the Corrour Station House in the West Highlands, where he established a unique fine dining experience, receiving very high critical acclaim. Then, a foray as Executive Chef at La Solana in the Pyrenees saw Oliver create a truly unique and memorable dining experience for one of France’s premier eco retreats. Prior to taking up his position with the Creamery, Oliver has been working for Blakefield’s in York, helping to deliver innovative and exciting food and drink to events all around Yorkshire.

Oliver Bennett, our new Executive Chef, has explained: “I am excited for the reopening of Calvert’s Restaurant where we will showcase the newly designed menu to our customers. Championing the finest Yorkshire Dales produce is at the heart of what we do, delivering show-stopping favourites whilst also creating unique dishes people will have never seen and tried before. It goes without saying that the menu will be an ultimate foodie’s dream!

“I’ve got some exciting ideas and concepts to show the versatility of our cheese.”

Trish Cannon, our Visitor Centre Director commented: “We are thrilled to be reopening our doors and welcoming customers back to our popular Visitor Centre. Whilst we have been closed, we have been hard at work behind the scenes, introducing new recipes that we are sure will delight our visitors. We are very much looking forward to having Oliver on board and working with him on our shared vision to build on our already successful food offering to take our food offering to the next level, to show our customers the versatility of our cheeses and local produce, and can’t wait to them try our new menu!”

As well as the Calvert’s Restaurant reopening, the Wensleydale Creamery will be welcoming customers back to all parts of its Visitor Centre from Monday 6^th July. The team are working extremely hard to ensure that customers and staff remain safe upon reopening. More information about the reopening plans can be found here: https://www.wensleydale.co.uk/blog/our-reopening-plans/.

Monday 6^th July will see the reopening of the Cheese Shop, with the 1987 Coffee Shop following on Friday 10^th July and the Yorkshire Wensleydale Cheese Experience welcoming customers from Saturday 11^th July.