Pine

Spruce at the pass

A spruce sprig can start the sequence before the first plate reaches the pass. Cal Byerley, Chef at Pine in East Wallhouses, sets that tone from a converted cow barn at Vallum Farm, near Hadrian's Wall, where the open kitchen sits in full view of the room. Since 2021, Byerley has been Chef Patron here, carrying the control of head pastry work at Forest Side into a wider kitchen discipline: clean edges, restraint, and a menu that lets Northumberland set the terms. The restaurant opened in October 2020, with Byerley and Siân Byerley building a dining room around foraging, garden cultivation, and small-producer relationships rather than imported theatre. Ian Waller, Head Chef at Pine, holds the same operating logic at the bench. His work is grounded in local ingredients, head-to-tail butchery, preservation, waste reduction, and the planning that happens before service begins. Waller has described recognition for Pine as a team outcome, and the room feels built that way: chefs bring the courses, explain the material, and keep the exchange close to the work rather than the script.

The menu follows the field

The tasting menu runs through 18-20 courses, with the kitchen garden, polytunnels, foraging routes, and local producers setting the frame. Fermenting, preserving, curing, and smoking are not decorative techniques here; they extend the season and give the kitchen a way to keep Northumbrian ingredients in play after their first moment has passed. The signatures show the range of that method: Yukon Gold Potato, Scallop, Fallow Deer, and Beetroot sit alongside dishes such as raw scallop with roe, fermented plum, rhubarb, and fennel pollen, or Old Spot pork with cherry and caraway. Bread carries the same argument in quieter form, with warm sourdough, einkorn wheat, sunflower petals and seeds, herb butter, and rapeseed emulsion. Waller's discipline around zero-waste cooking gives the menu another layer, because the value of an ingredient is tested across trimming, stock, preservation, and the final plate. Byerley has put the matter plainly: "Sustainability is a hospitality buzz word these days. It is the start and end of everything at Pine really."

A barn with the kitchen exposed

The room keeps the old agricultural scale and softens it. Vaulted ceilings lift the dining space, floor-to-ceiling windows look across farmland, and the pass remains close enough for guests to see hands moving between tweezers, pans, ferments, and boards. Pine holds one MICHELIN Star, and the house has also received a MICHELIN Green Star; at this address, the awards attach to a working system rather than a display case. The bar and lounge add a slower register to the house, with cocktails, alcohol-free drinks, coffees, and a wood burner, but the centre of gravity remains the bench. The Northumbrian tasting menu is measured in spruce, einkorn, fermented plum and Fallow Deer.