Ryan Blackburn

The Climb

The cooking at The Old Stamp House in Ambleside, Cumbria, is rooted in a third-generation hospitality family in Great Langdale, where Ryan Blackburn grew up less than five miles from the restaurants. That proximity shaped the way he reads food: the landscape mattered as much as home, and the local larder still sits at the centre of the work. Locally reared and grown produce is not treated as an accent here; it is the basis of the kitchen’s daily decisions.

Today

At The Old Stamp House in Ambleside, Ryan Blackburn works as owner and chef, with the menu built around a small group of local suppliers whose produce defines what leaves the kitchen. The approach is direct: community, locality and supply shape the cooking before technique does. Kysty, which he has owned since 2018, sits alongside that work in the same county and extends the same practical relationship to place.

In Their Words “That sense of community has stayed with me, and it is the reason I work closely with a small group of local suppliers whose produce defines the food we cook today.” “The landscape around me played just as important a role.”