Damian Wawrzyniak to open House of Feasts

Chef consultant Damian Wawrzyniak is to open House of Feasts in Eye Green, near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire next month.

The 70-cover restaurant (previously the Maccaloo gastropub) will serve a hearty menu with varied influences, according to Wawrzyniak.

He told The Caterer: "We will serve an international menu with lots of meat dishes. The House of Feasts also has a large back garden and we will serve hog roasts in the warmer months."

Wawrzyniak plans to close the site for refurbishment at the end of May for reopening in its new guise on 9 June. His wife Alicja, an interior designer, will be working alongside him on the project, as will his head chef Dominik Pietrzyk.

The chef announced plans to open his own restaurant at the end of 2016, initially via a crowdfunding project, stating then that his restaurant would be a place where customers could find "honest prices and traditional flavours." But his bid to raise £60,000 failed, so he and Alicja have financed the lease, refurbishment and reopening of the restaurant themselves. Wawrzyniak said: "It was a long journey and the hard work will start now, but Alicja and I are looking to welcoming everyone to the House of Feasts in June."

Early on in Wawrzyniak's career he completed a stage at Noma in Copenhagen, managed the Seafood restaurant at the London 2012 Olympics and oversaw a project at Park Royal London including a culinary academy owned by the Maroush Group. He is also known for his babka, a brioche-like yeast cake traditionally baked at Easter in Poland, which he cooked on the BBC Two programme Mary Berry's Easter Feast.

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