The Lake District's Best Food and Drink: A Local Guide

The Lake District's mountains and lakes get most of the attention, but the food here has its own remarkable story — invented by accident, carried up Everest, named after a now-abolished county, and, in one case, awarded three Michelin stars in an 800-year-old blacksmith's workshop. Here are the dishes and producers worth knowing before you visit, and where on our tours you'll actually find them.

1. Grasmere Gingerbread

Sarah Nelson invented Grasmere Gingerbread in 1854, and it is still made to her original recipe, in the same building, in the same village. It sits somewhere between a biscuit and a cake — spiced, chewy at the edge, crumbling at the centre — and the recipe is famously locked away, known to only a handful of people at any time. The shop occupies the old village schoolroom and rarely has fewer than a short queue outside it.

2. Kendal Mint Cake

Kendal Mint Cake was, by most accounts, an accident: in 1869, Kendal confectioner Joseph Wiper was making clear mint humbugs when a batch turned cloudy. Rather than waste it, he sold it anyway — and the dense, intensely minty bar that resulted became the standard ration of British mountaineering. Ernest Shackleton carried it to Antarctica in 1914. Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay carried it to the summit of Everest in 1953, reportedly remarking afterward that their only complaint was not having brought enough of it.

3. Cumberland Sausage

Cumberland sausage is sold coiled rather than in linked lengths — a single continuous rope of coarse-cut pork, heavily seasoned with pepper and herbs. The seasoning is the giveaway of Cumbria's history as a trading county: spices arrived through the west coast ports for centuries, and found their way into the local butchery as much as the local pantry. It's the kind of thing best eaten simply, at a pub, after a long walk.

4. L'Enclume, Cartmel

L'Enclume opened in 2002 in an 800-year-old former blacksmith's workshop in Cartmel, and in 2022 became the first restaurant in the north of England to be awarded three Michelin stars. Chef Simon Rogan built the restaurant's reputation on ingredients grown a mile away at his own farm, and the tasting menu changes with whatever the farm produces that week. It is, by any measure, one of the destination restaurants of the entire country — booking well ahead is essential.

5. Sticky Toffee Pudding

The accepted Lake District story credits Francis Coulson, co-owner of the Sharrow Bay Country House Hotel on Ullswater, with popularising sticky toffee pudding in the 1970s — a moist date sponge drowned in butterscotch sauce. Coulson later admitted the recipe actually came from a Mrs Martin, a hotelier in Lancashire, who in turn is said to have got it from two Canadian airmen billeted with her during the war. Cartmel's claim is commercial rather than historical: the Cartmel Village Shop began selling its own version in 1984 and has since sold more than ten million puddings, doing more than anyone to turn a hotel dessert into a national institution. Wherever it was actually invented, it is now unmistakably a Lake District dish.

6. Rum Butter

A spiced, rum-laced butter with origins nobody can quite pin down — though all accounts agree it appeared in the larders of west Cumbria in the 18th century, after rum and spices began arriving through the ports of Whitehaven, Workington, and Maryport. By Victorian times it had become essential to a Cumbrian christening: a bowl of rum butter and oatcakes was offered to every visitor who came to see a new baby, and each visitor left a silver coin in the bowl in return, the final haul a small fortune wished on the child. Today it turns up on toast, crumpets, mince pies, and — appropriately enough — melted over a slice of sticky toffee pudding.

7. Hawkshead Relish

Hawkshead Relish began in 1999 as a sideline to a small café in the village of Hawkshead, when Mark and Maria Whitehead started jarring the chutneys they served alongside meals. The 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis, which devastated Cumbrian tourism overnight, forced the couple to find buyers further afield rather than wait for visitors to return — and the relish business outgrew the café entirely. The Whiteheads were later awarded MBEs for their contribution to the Cumbrian food industry. Their chutneys, relishes, and preserves are sold across the country now, but the original shop is still in Hawkshead.

8. Morecambe Bay Potted Shrimp

Tiny brown shrimp, caught in the shifting sands of Morecambe Bay and traditionally sealed under spiced clarified butter — a preservation method said to date to Tudor times, before refrigeration made it unnecessary and taste made it irresistible anyway. The shrimping itself is genuinely hazardous work, historically done by horse and cart and now by tractor, navigating tidal channels that shift from one week to the next. Ian Fleming was famously fond of it, and gave the dish a small cameo in the world of James Bond.

A few more worth knowing

Beyond the eight above: Westmorland pepper cake, a dense spiced fruit cake traditionally served with a slice of cheese; damson gin, made from the small dark plums that grow wild in the Lyth Valley each autumn; and Herdwick lamb, raised on the high fells by a breed Beatrix Potter herself helped preserve, served in pubs across the national park.

Our private and bespoke tours can be built around food as much as scenery — Cartmel, Hawkshead, and the smaller producers across Cumbria are all easily reached with no fixed itinerary to work around. For anyone planning a trip specifically to eat well, a bespoke day can also be built around Cumbria's 13 Michelin-starred restaurants directly, rather than around the usual sightseeing route — whether that's a single meal at L'Enclume or a tour taking in several of the county's award-winning kitchens over a longer stay.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources & further reading

• Romney's Kendal Mint Cake — Our Story
• Visit Lake District — Michelin-Starred Restaurants
• Wikipedia — L'Enclume, Cartmel
• Wikipedia — Sharrow Bay Country House
• Wikipedia — Sticky Toffee Pudding
• Grasmere Gingerbread — History of Rum Butter
• Hawkshead Relish — Our Story
• Slow Food UK — Morecambe Bay Shrimp
• Lake District National Park Authority