Martin Burge to launch two new restaurants at Dormy House

Former two-Michelin-star chef Martin Burge is overseeing the launch of two new restaurant concepts at Dormy House hotel on the Farncombe Estate.

The revamp of the food offer begins this month with the closure of the Garden Room restaurant. It is planned to reopen on 13 February as the Back Garden, featuring a new look, concept and kitchen garden.

Under Burge's guidance, head chef Sam Bowser designed a menu that celebrates the local, sustainable and seasonal produce of the Cotswolds, featuring slow foods, high-welfare rare-breed meats and responsibly cultivated grains and vegetables.

Sample dishes include starters of Spring field chicken press, charred leek and Wiltshire truffle, and pearl barley & Worcestershire hop risotto with beer pickled onions and kale; mains of duck wellington, Oldfield's Cider sauce, caramelised apple and red cabbage, and roast cauliflower with Tewksbury mustard, sprout flowers, and hazelnut.

Desserts include orange marmalade souffle with toast ice-cream, and local apple tart, toffee sauce and black cardamom ice-cream.

Burge has also created a brand new restaurant for Dormy House. Dubbed MO, it will aim to provide an immersive and theatrical seven-course tasting menu experience for up to 12 guests when it opens on 27 February.

The Potting Shed restaurant will remain, taking the total number of restaurants at Dormy House to three.

Commenting on the new developments, Burge said: "This is an exciting time for us. We are constantly looking at ways to enhance our guest experience and the new restaurants are an important milestone for Dormy House and for the estate.

With the Back Garden we have created a menu which takes the estate's concept of fresh, local ingredients to a new level. Many of the ingredients will have travelled from the kitchen garden the restaurant overlooks."

Burge is culinary director of the 400-acre Farncombe Estate, which includes the four-red-AA-star Dormy House Hotel & Spa and the five-AA-star eight-bedroom Foxhill Manor. It also incorporates the three-silver-AA-star, 67-bedroom Fish hotel, where Burge launched seafood restaurant Hook last year.

He was previously executive chef for 14 years of Whatley Manor near Malmesbury, Wiltshire, where he held two Michelin stars for seven years.

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