Poetry on a plate: The story of Sonnet

Sonnet, a fine-dining restaurant in Alnwick, has made a remarkable impact in just six short months. Despite its recent opening, it has beaten two Michelin-starred restaurants to be named the number one fine dining restaurant in the region by Tripadvisor.

Owned and run by couple Gary McDermott and Claudia Mazareanu, Sonnet offers a unique dining experience, with a menu inspired by literary history and personal heritage.

After working as head chef at the – now Michelin-starred – Pentonbridge Inn in Cumbria before running the Michelin-listed Horse and Groom in East Ashling, Gary, alongside partner Claudia, fell in love with Alnwick after visiting last year for his brother’s wedding. The couple spent almost a year refurbishing and soft launching Sonnet before its official opening in February this year.

Here, Kate Hewison speaks to Gary and Claudia to discuss the story behind their success, the inspirations that drive their creativity and what’s next for Sonnet.

Congratulations on being named the number one fine dining restaurant in the region by Tripadvisor! How does it feel to achieve this recognition within just six months of opening?

Thank you – we are absolutely blown away with the feedback from our guests. It takes time and effort for our customers to upload their reviews on Tripadvisor, so it means a lot to us that they have left wonderful comments about their experience at Sonnet. We might not have any awards (yet) but for us the biggest award is positive customer feedback, and they put us in the number one spot!

Your restaurant’s name and concept are rooted in literary inspiration, can you tell us more about this and what it means to you?

When we first thought about opening our own restaurant, we knew we needed something special. We chose the name Sonnet as it is the word for a 14-line poem (not named after The Verve song). From there we built on the concept to become 14 courses and 14 customers. The only thing we didn’t get quite right was the building number being 41 but we were pretty close.

We thought the historic town of Alnwick provided the perfect location for our restaurant as well as being right opposite the theatre, creating a lovely social setting.

With such an impressive culinary background, how have past experiences in the industry influenced your approach to running Sonnet?

I must be honest hospitality has changed a lot over the last few years and I think everyone has had issues with finding and retaining staff. Our previous project was a much larger venue, and we sometimes struggled with staff issues, so when creating Sonnet, we aimed to have a small team and maintain it.

We want Sonnet to be personal to every guest that comes through the door. We really want to get to know our guests as this is something that has become common practice for us over the years. It was important to me that I could cook every day in the restaurant kitchen, making this is a driving factor for why we operate a four-day working week. Our shorter week allows the team to be fresh and well rested.

 

How do you incorporate your own heritages into the dishes at Sonnet?

Family and food are both incredibly important to Claudia and I, so we incorporate techniques from both of backgrounds. As a result of Claudia being from Romania we use a lot of preservation cooking methods, like ‘salata de vinete’, which is a BBQ aubergine usually served with toast and sliced tomato. We use the same method but serve it with our lamb.

Claudia and her mum create the fruit syrups that feature in our drinks menu, it is key for us that as many ingredients as possible are created naturally. We don’t own any high-tech equipment so therefore cook using methods we were taught growing up. An example of this is we use the best produce we can find and preserve food to be used throughout the year.

What inspires you and drives your creativity when developing new dishes?

For us it is simple, we make food we love to eat ourselves. We start off with a basic idea and then elevate it into restaurant standard, for example, the ‘Reuben Sandwich’ (which can be seen pictured below).

When we begin to create a new dish, we think of flavour first and how we can achieve the best taste, we like to include familiar flavours our guests will know. Next, we consider presentation and finally, we focus on the technical side and cooking process such as whether the dish will be barbequed, smoked, cured or steamed.

Inspiration for our menu often comes from memories we have. ‘Elevenses’ has been incorporated into our menu as the final course of the evening, which can be taken away to enjoy at home if desired. The inspiration for this dish was from my childhood memory of going to the high street with my grandma for our 11am treat, my gran’s favourite was a corned beef square.

How has the relationship with local suppliers and the Alnwick community contributed to your success?

We are blown away and honestly couldn’t thank the locals enough for the support we have received. The number of local businesses that have recommended Sonnet to their customers is overwhelming and has been a huge help in our success so far. We will be forever grateful.

It was essential that Sonnet fitted into the great town of Alnwick and became part of the community where we could also support local businesses. We have been able to do so with our hand soap supplied by Dovecote, our wooden trays from Proudlock House & Home and even our curtains from All Sewn Up.

Your menu features some playfully named dishes like ‘Quaver’ and ‘Cheese What?’. What role does humour play in your culinary approach, and how do diners respond to it?

We keep our menu very vague and our customers seem to love it. They love not knowing the details and often try to guess while they wait for the next course to arrive. We wanted to create a relaxed and informal dining experience, and it feels as though this has helped. We have recently introduced ‘chef notes,’ which is a section on the menu including a little background detail about each dish. For example:

S.B.P

Sticky Beef Pie, being a northern man we had to include some pastry, so this is my grans puff pastry recipe, that we stuff with our house pickle, pulled slow braised beef feather blade in all different spices, caramelised onion and a parmesan crumble then topped on with gruyere cheese.

Looking ahead, what are your future plans for Sonnet? Do you have any upcoming projects or ideas that you’re excited to explore?

Currently the plan is to keep pushing forward and continue to create great dishes that our amazing customers love. We are really excited about the future of our little restaurant and strive to put Sonnet on England’s culinary map.

We are looking ahead to a few charity events over the next year with our first taking place on the 22nd September, where we will be raising money for Mind and Sole in Alnwick. This event will see a pop-up bakery serving ‘proper pies’, sausage rolls and other delicious items to raise money for this great charity. Sonnet bakery you say? Maybe!

 

Sonnet is available for a single service dinner from 6:30pm, serving a 14 course tasting menu priced at £85 per person from Wednesday – Saturday. A single service five course lunch menu is served from 12:30pm Wednesday – Saturday priced at £40 per person and the dining room is dog friendly during lunch service only.

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