The idea for the whole-animal Herdwick dinner had been in Dominic's notebook for about two years before we actually did it. He had been thinking about it since a trip to a farm in Cumbria in 2023, where he watched a shepherd talk about the animals with a level of care and knowledge that made him feel, as he put it, 'a bit embarrassed about how casually we sometimes treat the ingredient'. The supper club in October 2025 was the result of that feeling.

What whole-animal cooking actually means

It means using every part of the animal, not just the prime cuts. The loin, the rack, the shoulder: these are the parts most restaurants use. Whole-animal cooking means also using the kidneys, the liver, the heart, the bones for stock, the fat for pastry or frying, the tongue, the cheeks. It requires more skill and more planning than conventional butchery, but it produces a more complete picture of the animal and it wastes almost nothing.

The Herdwick breed and why it matters

Herdwick sheep are a hardy upland breed native to the Lake District. They are smaller than commercial breeds and their meat is darker, more intensely flavoured, and slightly gamier than lowland lamb. They are also slower to mature, which means the farmers who raise them are working on a longer timescale than most. The Marsh family near Coniston, who supplied the animal for our October supper club, have been farming Herdwick on the same land for three generations. That continuity shows up in the quality of the meat.

How the menu was built

Dominic started with the bones, which became the broth served in the first course. Then he worked outward: the loin for the tartare, the shoulder for the slow-roast, the kidney on toast, the rack with herbs. The fat was rendered and used in the shortcrust pastry for the dessert. The stock from the bones was used to cook the white beans that accompanied the shoulder. Nothing was bought in to supplement the animal. Every course came from the same source.

What we learned from doing it

The main lesson was about timing. A whole-animal dinner requires a level of coordination that a normal service does not. The shoulder needs six hours in the oven. The broth needs to be made the day before. The kidney needs to be cooked at the last possible moment. Getting all of this to land on the table in the right order, at the right temperature, for 24 people, is a genuine logistical challenge. We got it right on the night, but only because Dominic had rehearsed the sequence three times in the week before.

We are planning another whole-animal supper club for autumn 2026. The animal has not been decided yet. If you want to be on the list, sign up to the mailing list and you will hear before anyone else.