The Riverside’s enticing menu features dishes created to showcase the region’s finest seasonal produce, including amazing ingredients produced on-site from the pub’s two kitchen gardens and two-acre smallholding which has bees, pigs, chickens and a heritage orchard. The pub’s talented chefs also utilise many Slow Food Ark of Taste ingredients, designed to preserve at risk foods.
Sustainable passion
Chef-patron Andy Link and general manager George Parkes are passionate about sustainability and engage and enthuse team members around it.
As well as helping with the gardens, which guests are encouraged to visit, staff dry out grasses and flowers to decorate the pub during the winter and forage for dish and drink ingredients.
Products crafted in-house include cobnut liqueur and a vermouth which is made with over 30 foraged and homegrown botanicals.
Judges were also impressed with the waste reduction strategy at this Coach House Inns’ pub, which includes whole animal butchery, composting for the kitchen gardens and analysing food waste to use in ingredients such as carrot top pesto.
Initiative highlight
The nine guest rooms at this 16th century pub, which include three quirky garden lodges, also have a strong focus on sustainability with natural and British products, including wool, used to furnish the rooms and carefully curated products enjoyed by guests.
Another standout initiative is the Riverside’s green community fund, launched earlier this year, to generate money through customer donations for local projects, such as tree and meadow planting, with about £15,000 a year being raised.
Meet all the 2022 GBPA winners:
The Dartford Sports Bar, Dartford Essex – Admiral Pub of the Year
Strait and Narrow, Lincoln, Lincolnshire – Best City / Urban Pub or Bar
The Three Hills, Bartlow, Cambridgeshire - Best Country / Rural Pub
The Bellflower, Garstang, Lancashire – Best Pub for Dogs
The Saddle Inn, Chester, Cheshire – Best Pub for Entertainment
Ye Olde Bridge Inn, Oxton, Nottinghamshire – Best Pub for Families
The Shibden Mill, Halifax, West Yorkshire – Best Pub for Food
Tamworth Tap, Tamworth, Staffordshire – Best Pub Garden
The Famous Three Kings, Fulham, London – Best Pub to Watch Sport
The Riverside at Aymestrey, Herefordshire – Best Sustainable Pub
The Lion in Treorchy, Wales – Community Hero
The Greene Oak, Windsor, Berkshire – Greene King Pub of the Year
The Gun Inn, Findon, West Sussex – Marston’s Pub of the Year
The Red Lion, Guildford, Surrey – Punch Pub of the Year
The Red Lion, Shepperton, Surrey – Star Pub of the Year
The Old Windmill, Coventry, West Midlands – Stonegate Pub of the Year
Natalie Coleman, the Oyster Shed, City of London – Best Pub Chef
Tiffany Long, the White Hart Freehouse, Ashill, Norfolk – Best Young Pub Chef
The Gun Inn, Findon, West Sussex – Great British Pub of the Year
