Meet head chef Shaun Dixon
(4 minute read)
15 minutes with head chef Shaun Dixon
Heading up the kitchens at Another Place, Shaun Dixon manages a team of talented chefs cooking everything from breakfast favourites to British fine dining with a global twist.
Catching him in a rare moment away from the pass, we chatted to Shaun about his Keswick childhood, the most popular dish on the Rampsbeck menu – and his recent experiments with beer ice-cream…
I grew up …
“In Keswick, so I’m a proper local!”
I learnt how to cook from…
“I come from generations of chefs. My father was a chef, as was my grandfather. My grandfather was the head chef at the Lodore Falls Hotel in Keswick for 20-odd years, and my father worked under him in the same kitchen.”
I became a chef by…
“After school, I went straight into cheffing on an apprenticeship programme, which later got taken over by Hilton. Every Hilton hotel had to have five apprentices, and we’d travel around all the different Hiltons in the UK and take part in a big show in London where all the apprentices had to cook for the bosses. From there, I worked in the Borrowdale Valley, at both the Borrowdale Hotel and Borrowdale Gates, which was my first Head Chef job and in a two-rosette kitchen.”
The Another Place kitchen is…
“Friendly! Everyone gets on – there’s no prima donnas in there. No one that thinks they’re the next Gordon Ramsay! There’s certainly no screaming or shouting. It’s quite a chilled kitchen.”
The food in Rampsbeck is…
“Contemporary British cooking at its best – with a global twist. We’re showcasing Cumbria’s finest ingredients with classical techniques and elevating them with international flavours, from beef fillet tataki to vodka-macerated watermelon with whipped feta and dukkah. Seasonal and fresh, every dish comes with signature flair and individuality.”
All our herbs come from the Another Place garden, plus lots of fruit and veg, like strawberries, kale, radishes, rhubarb, gooseberries and courgettes…
The food in The Living Space is…
“Easy, fresh, bold and laid-back. The menu is full of crowd-pleasers, from mezze to burgers, salads and hearty mains like lamb tagine and beer-battered haddock and chips.”
The Glasshouse is all about…
“The woodfired pizzas, handmade by our Italian pizza chef, Paolo. It’s all about his pizza-making skills and the theatre of it.”
I’m a perfectionist when it comes to…
“Poached eggs. If you give a guest a poached egg, they want the egg to ‘pop’ and the yolk to run. And often poached eggs are inconsistent in shape and texture, so I’m always trying to get a more consistent outcome! First, I tried to sous vide them by cooking them in a water bath, which made the eggs nice and soft but they didn’t pop. So then I did them in the oven, in the shell. And then I flashed them in ice water and then cracked and dipped them like normal, which worked beautifully.”
The atmosphere in our restaurants is…
“In Rampsbeck, the lake view is paired with fine-dining-level food and a slightly more formal experience. The Living Space brings something different, with a relaxed (dog friendly!) space designed for lounging, meeting and eating and with doors onto the terrace.”
Inspiration for new dishes comes from…
“Everything stems from seasonality, and then we weave in the flavours of the local landscape. All our herbs come from our the Another Place garden, plus lots of fruit and veg, like strawberries, kale, radishes, rhubarb, gooseberries and courgettes. So we’ll take inspiration from that, as well as what our local suppliers have available, and tweak the menu to fit what’s in season.”
We’re showcasing Cumbria’s finest ingredients with classical techniques and elevating them with international flavours, from beef fillet tataki to vodka-macerated watermelon with whipped feta and dukkah.
The most popular dish on our menu is…
“At the moment, the best-selling starter is the scallops with salt-baked celeriac, celeriac puree, hazelnut crumb and Granny Smith apple, followed by the salt-aged duck breast, confit potato, roasted root vegetables, beetroot puree, duck and damson bon bon with duck sauce. For dessert, I would say the sticky toffee pudding probably still wins. It originated in Cumbria, after all.”
I think plant-based food should be…
“Just as exciting and appealing as the meat or fish options. Rather than sticking to risottos and pastas, we like to keep it fresh and unexpected.”
You know a meal has gone down well when…
“The plates come back clean. I always like to check, partly because we want to make sure we’re not wasting much, but also because we want to see that the food’s been enjoyed. It’s the ultimate satisfaction test. A lot of the time guests come up to the pass to say thank you, too, which is lovely.”
We’ve been experimenting with…
“A beer ice cream, which is actually made from BrewDog Elvis Juice – a grapefruit beer. There’s a grapefruit gel on top with white chocolate, and then we use some fresh grapefruit segments to cut through the bitter ice cream and the white chocolate and give a hit of freshness and sharpness. Refining the ice cream recipe took a few goes and a few different beers. The guys in the kitchen liked trying them out in the process!”
My favourite ingredient to cook with is…
“It’s impossible to pick just one, but I do love cooking with local Cumbrian lamb. When the ingredients are that good, you don’t need to do much to them – the flavour speaks for itself. In spring, we had lamb rump on the menu and it was our most ordered dish.”
The best part of the job is…
“I love trying to progress my team with each change of menu and seeing their personal development while still giving them the freedom to express themselves.”
