Auberge du Lac

The chef at the lakeside pass

The kitchen garden sits within reach of the pass where Alex Bond, chef at Auberge du Lac in Welwyn Garden City, works with the discipline of earlier rooms behind him. His route has moved through 42 The Calls, Anthony’s, Restaurant Sat Bains, Sat Bains, Turners, Auberge du Lac, The Wild Rabbit, and, since 2017, alchemilla in Nottingham. At this address, the work belongs to a former hunting lodge on the Brocket Hall Estate, a building dating back to 1760 and set beside Broadwater Lake. The room has known more than one culinary register, including a Gallic period under Jean-Christophe Novelli in the early 2000s, but Bond’s presence here is best read through time on the tools rather than nostalgia. He has worked in kitchens where pace, precision, and consistency are not ideals pinned to a wall; they are the conditions of service. Auberge du Lac asks for that steadiness. The setting may be pastoral, with water beyond the windows and estate parkland around it, but the plate still reaches the table by the old measures: station by station, sauce by sauce, hand to hand.

Terrines, garden produce, and the long menu

The program at Auberge du Lac keeps several forms in play: à la carte, tasting menu, set menu, Sunday lunch, supper club, and private menus drawn around local, British, and seasonal ingredients. The cooking sits in a classic French fine dining frame, with a current emphasis on modern British produce and the estate’s kitchen garden only meters from the kitchen. That nearness matters. It gives the pass a practical rhythm, not just a pastoral claim. The dishes named by the house and its diners lean toward the old disciplines: Chicken and Ham Terrine with black garlic mayo and house pickles; a trio of lamb in steak, pulled, and terrine forms with pear fricassee, mushroom, and mint sauce jelly; scallops, turbot, cod, pork belly, and Yorkshire puddings; potato rosemary bread with herb butter; shrimp arancini; Souffle du Jour. The wine program is curated rather than sprawling in the telling, with pairings used to tighten the line between plate and glass. A Picpoul de Pinet alongside terrine does a simple job well: acid against fat, edge against softness.

The room beside Broadwater Lake

Service here happens in a refined, quiet room, formal in structure but softened by the estate around it. Warm light, lake views, and the low noise of an intimate restaurant give the pass a different pressure from a city dining room. The counter is not the focus. The room is. Plates leave the kitchen for tables that look across Broadwater Lake, and the old lodge holds the pace down without making the work feel still. Auberge du Lac reopened in May 2023 after a three-year hiatus, following pop-up events from October 2022 that tested dishes and brought local diners back through the door. That return gives the place a second kind of texture: not only linen, glass, and water, but recovery. The plate arrives intact from bench to table, with the Brocket Hall Estate visible beyond the glass.