Retreat East

Fried Maldon oysters, caviar, pickled grapes and English sparkling cream. Black treacle sourdough with black garlic butter. Salt baked beetroot tart with sloe gin jam.

And so, it seems that we have been tricked.

What first presented itself as a minibreak in a barn (an altogether charming one, mind – more on that later) is, in fact, a rather serious culinary experience. 

You think you’re having a cute time – frolicking in fields, louche-ing about in hot tubs, mainlining fireside rosemary margaritas – and then BAM: whipped cod’s roe and nasturtiums on ‘yesterday’s bread’. Truffle and cashew faux gras with gingerbread and pear. Small but perfectly formed pork and octopus laksa. 

This is the ‘snacks’ course: the petits fours (fives?) of starters. Each deeply considered and just as delicious. Almost all grown, baked or pickled on site – and even the Kentish oysters and Essex wine have covered less ground to be here than us. It sets the tone for an unexpected adventure of a tasting menu. 

And it is this that I want you to know about Retreat East – billed as a luxury retreat in the Suffolk countryside: that its head chef and sommelier duo are doing remarkable things with food and wine. Clever, playful, perfectly paired and profoundly respectful of nature, they use everything, make everything and make everything yum. It is, frankly, a little disconcerting. 

But now I’ve spoiled the surprise, and there’s a lot else you should know. Let’s rewind seven hours, as we’re pootling down the Suffolk roads to Retreat East. 

We arrive just after lunch, sneaking the commute into a slightly stretched Friday lunchbreak (sorry, boss), and head straight to our home for the weekend, the Granary, to wrap up work.

Retreat East has 23 barns and rooms, from the historic four-bed farmhouse to the sleek new field barns with outdoor baths. After eyeing up the pretty-in-pink Piggery, the sprawling size and sweeping meadow views from the Granary swayed me. 

She is a beauty, think cottagecore meets Modern House. Exposed beams and high ceilings run from formal dining room through mint-Smeg-kitted-out kitchen and cosy sitting room to meadow-hued master bedroom, via a pair of walk-in wet rooms – all backed by a huge terrace overlooking the fields.

It’s also gloriously spa-like, from the smell (not because it’s an old dairy barn, but because of divinely scented in-house smellies) to the luxe underfloor heating, which encourages not so much barefoot padding as all out nudity (just between us and the fields).

Laptops shut and clothes, as yet, intact, we take a walking map from reception (there are also Hunter wellies and bicycles) and embark on a pretty evening ramble through the surrounding fields to the charming Coddenham Community Shop, feeling brilliantly bucolic and bonny – and then back to devour our welcome basket of locally sourced Sussex treats (bar the soap, but even that looks tasty).

Unpopular opinion alert, on the subject of local sourcing: I actually like having a bit of sustainability shoved down my throat – it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy when I meet hosts actively trying not to burn their house down. But I respect the fact that the vast efforts Retreat East is going to make a more sustainable destination are discreet. Only by delving into their website (and lightly harassing their staff) do I find out about the onsite solar panel field, borehole and well providing water, sewage plant and organic farm garden yielding much of the menu. 

This, of course, brings us back to the hyper-local, seasonal, make-from-scratch, use-everything, waste-nothing food philosophy – and, more importantly, to my dinner. Where was I? 

As well as dishes starring yesterday’s leftovers or offcuts of earlier plates and a meat course using the entire duck, the chef saves unwanted food from local suppliers; when another buyer accidentally ordered 100 sweetcorns (not ten), these guys nobly rescued the rest. 

If I’m starting to sound a little evangelical, bear with me. That reclaimed corn became a sweetcorn ice cream “pre-dessert”. There’s also a dessert-dessert, and post-dessert – and I will be a devout disciple of anywhere serving three rounds of pudding. So there. 

By the end of dinner, we have become painfully earnest and enthusiastic (and honestly increasingly drunk, thanks to the seven-course wine flight). Thankfully Retreat East’s warm, unpretentious vibe means everyone pretends not to have noticed at breakfast. Several bowls of homemade granola down, we have some serious calories to burn. 

I should admit that I am completely and utterly insane when it comes to walks. I will lie, I will cheat, I will hide the map if it means extending a pleasant rural ramble into an exhausting hike. Thankfully, Smith will put up with any length of walk as long as there is a pub at the end. 

But I was on thin ice, by which I mean deep bog, with this one – dragging us through a marsh, and at some points an actual river, and several hours of thorny overgrowth to the Maybush in which, luckily, is excellent enough for Smith to forgive me. Luckier still, we have the outdoor hot tub booked to soothe bog-worn legs before dinner. 

‘I feel really chill,’ Smith muses as we float back to our barn after another candlelit feast, ‘I don’t know what’s happened.’ I would hazard a guess that what has happened is signature Retreat East. Whether it’s the walks, the wine, the spa, the food, the fireside stupors or whatever they’re putting in the boreholed water, it really works.