The Dog and Gun Inn Review

Sat in the village of Skelton in North Cumbria, The Dog and Gun Inn is a pub-cum-restaurant that had been on my list to visit for quite a while. Since being taken over by chef Ben Queen-Fryer and family in 2017, the award recognition has flowed steadily culminating in a precious star in 2022 and three rosettes a year later too, awards the restaurant has retained successfully each year since. I was therefore pretty confident of receiving a decent meal as I rocked up for an early dinner with my wife, our two children and my wife's parents, on a warm August Saturday.

North Cumbria is a couple of hours from me but in truth, I'd probably have visited sooner with the family if the restaurant opened for lunch (they don't, apart from the occasional Sunday) but I completely understand why they don't, particularly in the current climate. So after a great family holiday in Scotland, a little detour from the M6 on the way home seemed an ideal excuse to finally pop in.

Booking online via Resdiary had been no issue; as always I'd let the restaurant know via the booking form we'd be bringing a couple of children, but in truth I wasn't actually sure how child friendly the restaurant was. Their official website is pretty sparse in terms of info, so there was a slight fear they'd want to charge the full three course adult menu price for both kids (even if they didn't eat it). Of course, I could have just rung up and asked, but where's the drama in that?

There's no dedicated parking for the pub but plenty of street parking nearby, albeit this had become quite a lot busier by the time we left. Externally the building looks like a fairly traditional village pub, and that same feeling followed internally. I actually really liked the decor and feel; it's not uber smart like of a lot of leading pub restaurants we've visited, but it has a very nice homely feel. And by the way, I've seen so many reviews of this place complaining about the toilets, they are absolutely fine (and better than 90% of pub toilets out there), so please don't let that put you off.

We were the first in the restaurant for that evening's service, and the welcome on arrival was really warm and welcoming, which was great and really set us up for a lovely evening. On offer for dinner is a three course carte menu (which we ate from) and a tasting menu, made up of many of the same dishes. My concerns around what the kids could eat quickly evaporated; there's no children's menu or the option for half portions, but there was no hint of insistence from the staff that the kids would need to eat all three courses from the carte, and they even offer a couple of not-on-the-menu dishes for children which was much appreciated.

Drinks wise, the list is fairly concise but well thought out with a number of cocktails, a couple of mocktails and some very nice homemade soft drinks; my wife and daughter really enjoyed the homemade sparkling blackberry and rosemary. The wine list was interesting on a few levels; there are no vintages listed which wine connoisseurs always frown upon (I'm not one, but I can understand why). But what was really unusual here is that there were no makers listed either on the wine list we received, which I think is a first for me at a star level restaurant - it was literally just the grape and the origin location.

I'm sure of course the staff would be more than happy to share this information if asked, and I guess it makes it easier for the restaurant to swap wines in and out as they need, but it was a bit unexpected. In the end my stab at a mid-priced New Zealand Chardonnay resulted in a bottle of the very drinkable 2020 Greenhough Road Block for myself and my father-in-law, and it was priced a bit under a typical 3x markup of the normal retail price, so every cloud and all that.

Dinner began with some nice bread (included in the menu price); a mix of rosemary and sea salt focaccia and also some milk and potato rolls. This was a very good effort as bread goes which we all enjoyed, and even though the kids weren't eating from the full three course menu, we were served enough for them to have also.

Dinner proper began for me with the twice baked cheese and chive souffle. I've had quite a lot of cheese souffles in my time (I find it hard to resist one!), some very good, and some very bad. This one was excellent and the execution was pretty faultless. Texturally it was just as I'd like a cheese souffle but even more importantly than that, it packed a wonderful but balanced cheesy flavour.

My father-in-law had the same and was equally impressed, whilst my wife and mother-in-law both very much enjoyed starters of glazed beef short rib agnolotti and coronation chicken croquettes respectively. For the kids, my young son had just a side of chips whilst my daughter had a not-on-the-menu option of breaded chicken and chips. The chicken was a bit overcooked in truth albeit perfectly edible, but to be honest I was just happy they were able to provide that as an option as she didn't fancy anything from the main carte menu.

For mains, I opted for the hogget, which included a roast loin, shoulder and ratatouille, plus some garlic and olive oil mash on the side. The main plate was fairly agricultural presentation wise for a 1* main course, but all the meat was perfectly cooked and it very tasty. What really elevated this dish though was the mash on the side; the mash was delicious but underneath was even more meat (huzzah) creating in effect a little shepherd's pie; it was utterly, utterly divine.

My father-in-law enjoyed the steamed Dover sole with a lovely vermouth butter sauce, whilst my wife and mother-in-law both opted for the chicken breast, served with a truffle and egg yolk raviolo, wild mushrooms, asparagus and a roast chicken sauce. It was another excellent and suitably delicious main course.

It's fair to say we were very impressed with the savoury course cooking here; the only issue (and this is going to sound so trivial) were the chips, which both kids had but which also accompanied my father-in-law's fish main course. Every top pub restaurant we've been to over the past ten years or so (and we've been fortunate to visit a lot) serves great chips; for 2025 this includes places like The Hinds Head or The Abbey Inn and I could name many more going back further such as The Hand and Flowers; it's really a key staple of a leading pub restaurant menu.

The chips here just weren't great; they were not very crispy on the outside and not packing the level of flavour you'd normally expect from beef fat cooked chips. Given the standard of the other cooking on show I'm very happy to assume that maybe there was just an issue with the fryer on the day of our visit, but if not, my tiny bit of advice for the kitchen would be to just have a little rethink about how the chips are prepared.

Of course, we loved everything else about the savoury courses so there was no chance of us leaving without dessert. Desserts can sometimes be a little bit of a let down in high end pub restaurants, but that was absolutely not the case here.

I had the dark chocolate mille-feuille served with walnut caramel and bay leaf ice cream. If you asked me to describe a perfect mille-feuille on a 1* pub menu, this would be it, I was delivered exactly what I hoped for when I saw it on the menu. It looked rustic but still polished at the same time on the plate, and it was absolutely delicious, top marks.

My father-in-law had the same and was equally impressed, whilst my wife and daughter both had the baked lemon and duck egg tart with a raspberry sorbet which they both very much enjoyed also. As my mother-in-law didn't want dessert, my daughter's effectively went under my mother-in-law's three course menu price to keep the billing simple, which the restaurant had no issue with at all.

For my young son, the staff were happy to offer a couple of scoops of any ice cream or sorbet used on the main dishes which was much appreciated. Many restaurants are happy to do this (and it seems such an easy proposition), but you'd be surprised how many don't, so we never take it for granted. He could have gone for vanilla ice cream (and I suggested he did), he went for the raspberry sorbet, this turned out to be fairly tart and not sweet, perfect for the lemon tart dessert but not on its own for a kids dessert. Hopefully next time he'll listen to his dad!

By this point, a very snooty group of six had arrived at the restaurant (way before their booked reservation time) and were sat glaring at us waiting for our table, whilst making loud comments about the service as the team rightly concentrated on serving guests who were in the middle of their meals. My advice to that table would be to book further in advance if they want an earlier seating time. Oh, and also to not be arseholes (not the fault of the restaurant at all of course).

But even against that backdrop, we were still offered tea/coffee (we passed this time) and there was no sense of us being rushed out of the restaurant at all, which was great to see. There was still time for one final surprise also; even though we weren't staying for coffee, we were presented with some plastic boxes of petit fours to take away. There were three types, six of each, so again the kids were included. We had these the next day and they were delicious also; definitely some of the tastiest p4's I've had in recent memory.

And that as they say was pretty much that. Collecting the bill was no issue; there's no automatically included service charge here which is very rare nowadays for a star level restaurant. There's also no option to leave one on the card machine; I certainly would have left a tip if there had been an option. So, as admirable as it is that the restaurant isn't pushing customers to pay more, I think they could probably take in quite a serious chunk of additional revenue with a card system setup that supported optional gratuities when paying.

Overall, we had a great time here and a thoroughly enjoyable meal. The food was the star of the show with some genuine top class cooking on show, but the service too was fantastic and we were really well looked after. One of the waitresses was clearly very new (certainly her first week if not first day) but everyone has to start somewhere (she did absolutely fine by the way), and the more senior team members kept everything running smoothly, as well as making us all feel very welcome from arrival right up to us leaving.

I honestly wasn't quite sure what to expect from our visit here but everything across the board (food/service/value) was genuinely a level above where I thought it would be prior to our visit. I guess I'd sum up by saying this is an excellent restaurant by any standard; I wish the team and everyone involved all the very best moving forwards, and I'd love to be able to make a return trip in future.