Chef Chris Sherville launches new restaurant in South Devon

Moorish kebabs, goujons of plaice and Mediterranean mezze will sit on the menu side by side with local cheese, raspberries “from the village” and quintessentially British puddings when The Vineyard Kitchen opens at Sharpham in South Devon at Easter. 

The alfresco café overlooking the River Dart at the 500-acre Sharpham estate near Totnes will be the “evocative” location for chef Chris Sherville who has peppered the menu with local produce, exotic flavours inspired by his travels and award-winning wine and cheese produced on the estate.

Chris will be guided in this new venture by his personal food philosophy. “It’s very simple to me,” he says. “I only cook what I enjoy cooking and I put my heart and soul into it. These are dishes I love eating and I hope other people will enjoy eating them too.

“I like a bit of theatre, so we have a wood-fired oven and people will see directly into the flames and watch what’s going on. It’s really important to have that relationship with the customers as well as the food. There isn’t a pass in our kitchen or a maître d’ so it’s a bit more of a relaxed approach.”

There’s no “theme” to the menu, instead it draws on wonderful local produce, especially fresh fish, which will be cooked with imagination by Chris. Vine prunings from the vineyard will be thrown on to the flames to add a smoky kick to barbecued mackerel, young vine leaves will be wrapped around sardines before going into the wood-fired oven.

Pulled Pork Bahn Mi will cook slowly until the meat simply falls apart and mussels will be married with parsley, garlic and a splash of sherry. Chris says he will make the most of the great quality ingredients on the doorstep. As well as Devon’s finest beef, lamb, pork, fish and shellfish, he will use some of the incredible Sharpham produce.

“I will use wine in the cooking, obviously,” he says. “They have a lovely fizzy pink which I’ll use in a jelly served with oysters and pickled cucumber.

There are lots of dishes I can create with the cheeses - I love a crab rarebit. Perhaps the best thing is just to use them in a standalone cheeseboard. They make a wonderful Cremet goat’s cheese with cream, which is as good as anything that comes out of France.”

Chris Sherville comes to The Vineyard Kitchen with a wealth of experience behind him. He worked in the arts and fashion for Sotheby’s, Versace and Harvey Nichols before deciding to follow his passion and, at the age of 35, retrained as a chef at Leith’s Cookery School. He ran a restaurant in Bath and the pop-up restaurants at the Port Eliot Festival at St Germans in Cornwall. “In eight years we went from just me and a girl in the kitchen to a staff of 14 serving up 2,500 meals a day. We were turning out 200 portions of whitebait, calamari and frites an hour,” he says.

More recently he has been working with Michelin star chef John Burton Race as Two Grumpy Chefs, providing bespoke private catering.
Chris’s cooking is also influenced by his globetrotting. He grew up in Hong Kong and Malaysia and has travelled widely – India, Thailand, Greece, Spain and America can all be experienced in his cooking. 

He is preparing to open on Good Friday, April 14, for the Easter Weekend. The Vineyard Kitchen is expected to open six days a week (not Mondays) for brunch and lunch during the summer months from June to September. 

For more information about The Vineyard Kitchen call 01802 732178 or visit www.sharpham.com or The Vineyard Kitchen Facebook page.