The Walnut Tree Inn

The Walnut Tree Inn

When Shaun Hill took over The Walnut Tree Inn in 2008, he wasn't just acquiring a road-side pub in a beautiful rural Welsh setting. Between 1963 and 2001, it was a genuine culinary landmark run by pioneering chef Franco Taruschio but had more recently fell on hard times.
The Walnut Tree Inn
Llanddewi Skirrid
Abergavenny
United Kingdom
NP7 8AW
Contact Details
  • 01873 852 797
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  • The Walnut Tree Inn
    The Walnut Tree Inn, Llanddewi Skirrid, United Kingdom, Abergavenny, NP7 8AW
    Telephone
    01873 852 797
    Restaurant reservations
    Open Table Logo

    If anyone could revive the inn's fortunes it was Hill who had developed a fondness for the place as a regular customer during Taruschio's ownership.

    Rather than try and replicate the inn's original Italian formula, Hill relied on his idiosyncratic yet highly appealing style of cooking to successfully woo back the customers. The daily changing menu is peppered with Hill's classic dishes including monkfish with tomato, chilli and ginger and rack of lamb with spring vegetable stew. The seasons are clearly reflected in dishes like the quintessentially spring-like new-season asparagus with Jersey Royals and morels, and Hill's love of offal evident in calf’s sweetbreads with pork cromesqui and sauerkraut.

    The guides and critics have been quick to heap praise on the restaurant. Awarding 9.75 out of 10, the Guardian's Matthew Norman said 'this place...sings of a blissful and fecund union between sheer talent and lack of pretension'. Michelin have bestowed a star and it was voted 17 in the National Restaurant Awards list of the best 100 restaurants in the UK.

    Just as Hill eschews over-elaboration on the plate, the inn's bar and two dining rooms are all about elegant restraint; white painted walls, carefully chosen art and simply laid wooden tables. You'll also find elegance and restraint if you stay overnight (and you should, if only to try out some of the excellent wine lists more obscure selections such as Ribas Soma, a viognier from Mallorca) in one of the two cottages adjacent to the inn.

    The Walnut Tree Inn
    The Walnut Tree Inn, Llanddewi Skirrid, United Kingdom, Abergavenny, NP7 8AW
    Telephone
    01873 852 797
    Restaurant reservations
    Open Table Logo
    The Chef

    Shaun Hill

    Born in Belfast and brought up in London’s Primrose Hill, Shaun Hill studied Classics at Exeter University before embarking on the world of work. A period ‘between jobs’, as he euphemistically phrases it, spurred him to enter the kitchen. He thought it would be nice to eat well and learn to cook at the same time, but soon found the realities of cooking professionally, at the bottom of the kitchen hierarchy, a little different. His first position was as commis chef at ‘the local poncy eaterie’, The Cherry Tree in Southgate, London. He told Andy Hayler: ‘The food was really the daft sub-classical repetoire of the time: steak Diane, sole Veronique, duck a thousand fruity ways etc. But I learned how a kitchen operates, how to cut up carcasses and make stocks and sauces, all of which were amazingly done in the traditional and time-consuming manner.’Next came a position with Robert Carrier, a prominent food writer at the time, at his eponymous restaurant. Serving rustic (though expensive) Mediterranean food – still something of a novelty in 1960s London – Shaun Hill says of his time there: ‘I loved it there and the lessons learnt have stayed with me.’ He went on to a spell at The Gay Hussar, the legendary politicians’ hangout in Soho and self-declared ‘only Hungarian restaurant in England’ before moving on to work at some of London’s most prestigious restaurants, including The Capital Hotel in Knightsbridge (under Brian Turner) and Blakes in South Kensington.