Meet Some of the Brilliant Chefs Cooking at Living North's Christmas Fair in Newcastle

October 2024

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Fabulous cocktails, homemade chocolate, and quality game cooking - Living North's Christmas Fair really has it all

Ahead of Living North's Christmas Fair at Newcastle Racecourse (24th-27th October), we caught up with some of the outstanding talent you can expect to see working their magic in our chef demo kitchen.

Connor Wilson

Head Chef at The Kirkstyle Inn and Sportsman’s Rest

Tell us about your background.
I grew up in Haltwhistle which is about 10 miles away and started out in a pub just down the road from where I grew up. I started as the kitchen porter and then went to work in different places including the Pentonbridge Inn in Cumbria and The Traddock in North Yorkshire. I came back up to Slaggyford because I saw they were refurbishing the pub. I spoke to Nick Parkinson and we both had the same philosophy of what we wanted to achieve and what we were about. We want to promote game, eating from the area that we’re in and promoting sustainability. We take the farm-to-fork ethos quite seriously.

How would you describe the style of food at The Kirkstyle Inn and Sportsman’s Rest?
My style is quite minimalist (we try to use as few things as possible and not put loads of flavours on the plate), but also quite clean and refined. Modern British is probably the official style. The only limitations we have in terms of creative freedom are what we put on ourselves, in that we don’t use anything that isn’t from here, and we make everything ourselves. We find that limitations spur on creativity, and without limitations there’s no force to be creative.

What’s on the menu currently which excites you the most?
That’s a hard one. We’re going to have partridge on the menu which I’m pretty excited about. We’re on a game estate so it gets shot here and we see it through from start to finish. We’re going to do it with parsnips and some pears this year.

Tell us what guests can expect from you at Living North Christmas Fair.
We’ll come and cook some game which has been shot on our estate. We’ll prepare it and show guests how to cook it. It’s a really nice one for guests because often they’re put off trying it, but it’s actually just as easy to cook as any meat. Our big thing is to promote the eating of game because there’s so much around here and it’s so well looked after.

Do you have a favourite game meat?
Grouse!

Connor will be cooking in the Chef Demo Kitchen on Saturday (26th) at 12pm.

Isabelle Smith

Founder of Twenty Nine Degrees Chocolatiers

Tell us about the origins of Twenty Nine Degrees.
I started the business in December 2020 part-time during Covid. I’m not professionally trained but I had nothing to do and decided to teach myself chocolate making – they went down really well with family and friends.

How do you develop your flavours?
Most of it is trial and error to see what works and see what doesn’t. It’s a constant process of learning and that’s what I like about it, especially with the decorative work that I do. I started taking customers’ suggestions online and they suggest flavours they want, which is really good because it means that customers are getting what they want but it also means that I get to try making new stuff. It keeps it interesting!

What goes into a great bar of chocolate?
That’s a good question. I think firstly the quality of the ingredients as you’ve got to have good chocolate otherwise it’s going to taste cheap and nasty. I also think texture is really important, especially when it’s something big like a bar. Quite often you don’t want something solid, you might want a soft filling, or a bit of crunch in there, something like that. You also want it to be even throughout and if you have chunks you don’t want them to all be at one end – you want good texture and good flavour.

Tell us what guests can expect from you at Living North Christmas Fair.
The last few times I’ve done ganache but I think this year I’m going to do caramel. Once you get the hang of it, it’s not that complicated but it takes patience and you’ve got to be so vigilant with it because it burns so quickly. It’s only three ingredients as well so you don’t need anything fancy or equipment. Three ingredients in the pan and you’re done!

What’s your favourite flavour and what’s the crowd favourite?
Crowd favourite is salted caramel, but my favourite (which I haven’t actually made yet, but it’s on the list) is white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake.

Isabelle will be in the Chef Demo Kitchen on Saturday (26th) at 2pm.

Angus Mason

Owner of Newcastle Cocktail Kitchen

How did Newcastle Cocktail Kitchen begin?
I got into doing cocktails quite late, in my late 20s, and had worked pretty much every other job in hospitality. I realised I was more drawn to what bartenders were doing and was in Edinburgh at the time, and my favourite restaurant was Aizle. They had a position come up and I finally found my groove. I came back to Newcastle and got a job at House of Tides, which was a fantastic place to work and I stepped up as bar manager. When Solstice opened there wasn’t a role for a full-time bartender so I started pre-batching cocktails so servers could just pour it into a glass. I soon realised that there was a potential business there. Loads of bars were struggling with staff and there was a market for creating this excellent product that was easy for staff to serve, and that’s how Newcastle Cocktail Kitchen was born.

How do you build a cocktail menu?
It’s all about balance really. You have to have something really accessible for those that are more fussy, you’ve got to have something strong and bitter, and it’s about making them all work together rather than just as individual cocktails. I like to work seasonally too, and it’s important to get your ingredients when they’re at their best. I’m just getting rid of all the strawberry things from my menus now because the strawberries I’m getting in aren’t very good, but then you’ve got things like elderberries which are growing on my doorstep so it makes sense to use them instead. I’m more ingredient led than spirit led which is probably a bit different from other bartenders, but that’s just because of my restaurant background – I’ll build a drink around a seasonal ingredient rather than start with a nice vodka.

Tell us what to expect from you at Living North’s Christmas Fair.
The most interesting drink visually that I have is called Madame Butterfly. It’s a blend of whisky and rum as the base, and then I’ve got amaretto, Granny Smith apples, a maple verjus, and then I wash the whole cocktail with brown butter. I’ll be going through the importance of using better ingredients but also humble ingredients like apples.

And if you had to pick a favourite cocktail?
A negroni!

Angus will be in the Chef Demo Kitchen on Friday (25th) at 2pm.

Our Full Chef Demonstrations Lineup: