Shop and Restaurant Hours

Monday to Friday 10am - 4pm
Saturday 10am - 4pm
Bookings are advisable (01458 250875)
Closed for Bank Holidays. Wheelchair access is good.

The Menu

We serve our customers with produce - locally sourced wherever possible - fresh from the smokery - often so fresh that we actually unload straight out of the smoker!, - and we make all our own soups, puddings and cakes. Our aim is to offer simple excellence.

Our menu changes daily - so here's just a sample menu:

	Starters £3.75 £3.50 for soup Smoked eel on rye ~ Smoked salmon paté Home made carrot and orange soup ~ Parma ham with figs
Main Courses £7.50 Hot smoked salmon steak ~ Smoked chicken mango Kassller - smoked loin of pork ~ Smoked eel All served with salad and garlic new potatoes
	Puds £3.75 Golden syrup bread and butter pudding Tropical pavlova Strawberry freeze Smoked cheddar and biscuits

We are licensed and sell a most delicious apple aperitif (made by our neighbour Julian Temperley at the Somerset Cider Brandy Co.), as well as very good white and red wines supplied by Averys of Bristol.

Directions
Coming from Curry Rivel, (a big village just outside Langport on the road to Taunton), take the B3168 Ilminster road at the Bell Hotel and head towards Hambridge - after one and a half miles see the Brown and Forrest sign on the left. Follow the concrete drive up to the farm buildings and smokery parking.
Follow the smoke!

Write-up in the Weekend Telegraph

Some excepts from Alice Thomson's column:

"At Brown & Forrest.....Mrs Beeton would have adored it. This is her perfect family lunch. We ordered everything. The soup...was made from winter vegetables taken from the farm. It was fierce and peppery, the stock was exquisite and the vegetables crunchy. The eel fillets had been smoked over beech and apple and came on a slice of rye bread with a wedge of lemon and......it brought out the creaminess of the eel. The lamb came warm, with redcurrant jelly and tasted like a fine carpaccio, lightly seared. It went perfectly with the plain boiled potatoes, green salad and surprisingly good Kiwi fruit. I tried the hot smoked salmon steak, which had been marinated in sherry, soya, garlic and ginger then smoked on oak. It was so light and flaky that I finished it and still managed to taste a few wafers of smoked duck."

And from Belinda Richardsons column:

"she was dead right, that waitress, there is not a seat left in the house now and I am stuck with two puddings, so which to start with? The lemon and ginger tart or the bread and butter pudding? Doubtlessly the wrong way round, I go for the pudding first because, out of the two, it is the ugly duckling. But it is a corker. No raisins, just syrup, bread butter eggs and milk. This is the sort of thing Scott and Oats should have taken with them to the south pole. It doesn't end there. Shocking I know, but I could have had two of those lemon and ginger tarts. Served at the perfect temperature, the texture is a gritty mix of almonds and polenta, and the shards of minutely grated lemon versus ginger tickle my palate all the way to the moon. No mater how much I beg the friendly waitress she will not give me the secret recipe."

"From Smokery to Restaurant" - the route to a restaurant

In our family travels we found that many smokehouses in Germany and Holland offered their own produce hot and fresh out of the smokers, often served in very simple settings but always tasting delicious: fresh smoked eel or trout in warm bread with a glass of beer seemed the food of the gods. That got us thinking. So too when visitors to the smokery shop would exclaim, " This all looks wonderful, it's making me hungry, where can we eat round here?" And we would dutifully point them in the direction of a pub or inn.

And then in 1999 the barns adjoining our smokery, which had been used as a dairy and granary, fell vacant, so we decided to turn the idea into reality. Though we smoked food, neither of us had had any experience in running a restaurant. My wife was a nurse and a very good cook. After twenty five years of nursing she felt she was due for a career change; she would run the restaurant. We opened in November 1999 and it just took off.

What we did not know was what a beautiful building was hiding under the false ceiling of the dairy and the dust and grime of the granary. The builders uncovered soft stone and brick walls and a perfect set of warm coloured oak umbrella beams. With the stone flag floor it makes a perfect setting for an informal restaurant, somewhere peaceful to sit with the papers over a good cup of coffee or to come with friends for a delicious lunch. In the good weather you can eat in the courtyard outside and watch the swallows.