Great British Menu chef to reopen top restaurant
A MICHELIN-star restaurant that suddenly shut down last year is being rebooted thanks to a top London chef who appeared on the BBC show Great British Menu. Pensons, in Worcestershire, closed in December, despite its previous praise from Michelin judges.
Now chef Ivan Tisdall-Downes has announced he is taking over the location at Netherwood Estate – between Tenbury Wells and Bromyard.
Self-taught Ivan, who once worked at Devon’s famous River Cottage, is opening the latest restaurant under his ‘Native’ brand with his business partner Imogen Davis on May 22.
It will have a “hyper-sustainable menu style” that combines foraging and street food, which the pair have showcased at Native eateries in London.
Some of their wild cooking went viral when they served up squirrel, ants and hogweed – but that’s not the norm on the menu. Ivan, who competed in Series 15 of Great British Menu representing London and the South East in 2020, even has a muchloved signature dish of woodpigeon kebab.
The London-born chef and Imogen, from Northamptonshire, met while students in Brighton and shared an ethos of a zerowaste kitchen practice and cooking only sustainable, ultra-seasonable produce. Starting out with pop-ups and street food, they went on to open Native in Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden before moving to
Borough Market, then Osea
Island and Brown’s in Mayfair. Ivan’s dishes in Worcestershire will range from nasturtium taco with lamb tartar and oyster leaf to The Oak Pool, which is made up of chalk-stream trout, lapsang dashi, tempura and crayfish.