Herdwicks Cafe Coniston – Review

On a recent annual trip to Cumbria, we headed to one of our favourite dog friendly cafes in the Lake District – Herdwicks in Coniston.

Situated in the popular village of Coniston is Herdwicks, known for its locally sourced home-made food and dog friendly atmosphere, popular with locals and tourists alike.  You can park for a limited time of the street outside the cafe, or just next door is a pay and display car park.

We’ve been coming to this cafe for the last few years as we always have our dogs along for the ride and having a decent inside space as well as a good outside offering in terms of tables, it provides a relaxed environment to allow us to enjoy some tasty food whilst knowing our dogs are very welcome and aren’t in the way.

We arrived in time for their lunch menu which meant we could justify having cake for afters!

The Food

We chose the Herdwick lamb mint burger, with mint mayo, lettuce and tomato, served with fries and salad, priced at £15 and the Belted Galloway beef burger, with cheese, lettuce and tomato, also served with fried and salad, priced at £15.

Both burgers it should be noted were served on a toasted bun, and were absolutely delicious.  The mint mayo on the lamb of course was a great choice and made for a nice variation on a classic burger.  The beef burger was well seasoned and along with the fries and a very tasty salad was a great choice.

The Herdwick lamb and Belted Galloway beef are both sourced from nearby Yew Tree Farm which we have bought directly from in the past for Darren to make a lamb wellington (that was incredible by the way!), you can see how that went on his instagram.

For pudding, we opted for chocolate cake (£4.70) and a slightly more unusual turmeric and peach cake (£4.10).  The chocolate cake was dark and rich, very tasty but maybe could have done well with a little pouring cream.  The turmeric and peach cake was lovely, with the turmeric being present but not overpowering, the peach was lovely and subsequently could have been more of it!

Overall, we had a satisfying lunch at Herdwicks Cafe and can’t wait to go back next time we are in the area.