Fellpack — Restaurant in Great Britain

7.30pm table for two on a Sunday night. Nice welcome; nice lively atmosphere. Very trendy, hip and relaxed. As another reviewer has commented, you probably don't need a self-published book on the table for customers to flick through, extolling how great you are for opening a place that serves food...what a long strange trip it must obviously have been! The premises previously housed the Pumpkin cafe and don't seem to have been altered much which is no bad thing.

Order. I know I am a grumpy old man but when I place my order for food and drink, I don't need to be told be told that it is "cool". Please, just take my order, say thank you and go and wax your beard.

Food. To start, a mix of marinaded olives was very nice as was the flat bread with pomodoro tomatoes. Main courses were a problem, however. I ordered the mushroom and shallot tart with a port reduction served with bubble and squeak. What came was just silly. A tart is "an open pastry case containing a sweet or savoury filling". What I received was an under cooked puff pastry pie topper, which was obviously not home made (think Pukka), sat on top of some very odd chunky spuds with way too much whole grain mustard, with a spoonful of quartered closed cup mushrooms and diced shallot in a thin sauce which tasted more of raw red wine than reduced port. None of it was very pleasant.

The chicken cassoulet my partner tried to get through was way too salty and the chicken had been over cooked. Don't get me wrong, in a well made cassoulet the chicken or preferably duck will fall off the bone but this had been left too long to keep warm on top of the beans and simply dried up to the point that the heat hardened flesh had to be peeled off to get to the more tender meat beneath.

Didn't bother with dessert. Had the food been acceptable, value for money would have been fine. The place will, I'm sure, ride along on a wave of hipster hype for a while longer. Hungry walkers after a day on the fells and with a few drinks inside them will continue chomping on whatever is placed before them but they really need to up their game and not take the lazy option in the kitchen in order to maintain...

Fellpack — where logic gets drop-kicked out the door and the staff operate on a level of self-importance usually reserved for airport security and minor royals.

We walk in and ask for a table for two. The woman at the front takes the kind of deep, dramatic inhale you’d expect before delivering life-altering news and finally says, “Umm… maybe in 45 minutes.” No problem, we say — “We’ll go grab a quick drink and come back in 40.”

Her face drops like we just asked her to donate a kidney. “If you leave, you’ll lose your spot — it’s first come, first serve.”

Wait… what? You just told us 45 minutes. We’re offering to come back before that. But apparently, unless we loiter silently in the corner for the full wait time like ghosts of diners past, we’re out.

We clarified — twice. She doubled down with the enthusiasm of a parking inspector on commission. No reasoning, no flexibility, no sense. Just a smug grin and a vibe that screamed, “We’re Fellpack. We don’t explain ourselves to the public.”

Here’s the thing: it’s a restaurant in Keswick — not a members-only supper club in central London. You’re not curing diseases. You’re serving food. Good food? Maybe. But not good enough to justify this pantomime of control.

We walked out before we gave ourselves a concussion from eye-rolling too hard.

If your idea of a great night is being treated like an uninvited guest at your own meal and standing around like a lemon waiting for the privilege to pay for it — Fellpack is your spiritual home. For everyone else? There are plenty of better places in town where the staff don’t treat common sense like a threat to...

We tried to make a reservation, but it was fully booked. We saw on the website that they accept a small amount of walk-ins so I called beforehand asking how likely it would be that walk-ins would be accepted and what time they would suggest arriving to increase our chances of getting a table. Was told they try not to turn anyone away but realistically it's always busy. We risked it and so thankful we did. We arrived at 6pm and already the restaurant was full, so I asked if we could just wait outside until a table became available. The host said he couldn't guarantee when a table would be available but we didn't mind waiting. After 15 minutes, he had remembered we were outside and came outside to tell us a table had become free. He didn't need to do that, so again, we were really grateful. Now onto the food....incredible. We had the lamb tagine which melted in our mouths and the chicken katsu curry. Divine. We finished it off with delicious sticky toffee pudding. Food came in a good amount of time, even though the restaurant was packed, and it was so so tasty. Price was good for the quality too. Would recommend to everyone! Just wish this was...