About Us
The Owners of Birkinshaw's: Adrian & Eleanor
Some of Adrian's earliest memories center around food, especially English food, the smells and sights from the bakery and adjoining shop near his grandparents' house, and home made Yorkshire puddings and winter casseroles.
A keen home baker and Tea Room visitor, encouraged by many trips over to France, it was only after a varied career in hospitality and retail that Adrian took the opportunity to fully indulge his lifelong passion. He trained with renowned French baker, Richard Bertinet, gaining a broad and exciting understanding of the methods for yeast-based recipes prevalent across France and Europe. Subsequently honing his skills and knowledge of English and continental baking and cooking, Adrian opened and spent several years running an Italian-inspired restaurant and pizzeria in the south west of England. For Adrian, Birkinshaw's represents a well overdue return to his passion for good food.
Favourite things to bake: Parmesan, Parma ham and Pine nut Whirls and French Epees.
* * *
Even as a very little girl Eleanor loved to be allowed to help make the Sunday tea and progressed, by the age of eight or nine, to it being her 'job' at home. Warm scones and butter, savoury tarts and pastries and colourful salads and, joy of joys, cakes and fruit loaves of all kinds. Thus started a lifelong delight in the homely pleasures afforded by coffee, tea and cake in all its variations... 'elevenses', afternoon tea, childhood cocoa and supper...
In her adult years, after many years spent in a career in international marketing, Eleanor took cordon bleu training, taking the opportunity to further her interest in regional and European cakes, biscuits (cookies) and pastries.
Recent years have been spent running cooking classes for children and adults, hopefully passing on some of her own pleasure in beautifully presented dishes and treats.
Favourite things to bake: Italian Peach and Almond Tart and Sussex Pond Pudding.
Our Traditional English Tea Room
Our 'house tea' at Birkinshaw's Tea Room is Yorkshire Tea, an ethically sourced and traded, top quality black tea.
As part of their commitment to the environment, Yorkshire Tea has planted over 3 million trees and is still planting every day. So, as well as having a superior cuppa, you can feel good drinking it.
Yorkshire Tea is one of the brands from Taylor's of Harrogate, world class tea suppliers. The folks there taste thousands of teas on a regular basis, so the blending always maintains its characteristic flavour and ensure that, despite variation in harvests, Yorkshire Tea is always "a proper brew" – pure and simple.
Fair prices are paid for really good tea from farms in Africa and India, to make a lovely blend that’s big on flavour, seriously refreshing and kind to the people who grow it.
Our Coffee House
At Birkinshaw's, Amherst, we insist on the best and offer only fair trade, organic coffee. Our coffee is roasted freshly in small batches by local coffee roasters Aroma Maya just down the road in Truro, ensuring the best roast and the freshest flavour every time you drink it.
But let us first introduce you to our Rocket Mozzafiato Evoluzione, a hand built espresso coffee machine from Italy. All espresso machines are not built equal, and the Mozzafiato Evoluzione has the world standard Group 61 brew head that is warmed by the boiler ensuring full extraction of flavour and a great crema. With PID technology, that ensures a constant supply of water at the correct temperature, you also get great textured steamed milk for your cappuccino or latte.
A straight filter coffee, sir? Or how about an espresso, a cappuccino or a latte? Our Birkinshaw's House blend, Chosen by a unanimous vote of local coffee drinkers comes from the highest non-volcanic mountain range in Central America, real coffee just how you know it should taste and which you can feel proud to drink.
Our Restaurant
Birkinshaw's offers a core menu of wonderful homemade snacks and meals made using the finest ingredients (absolutely no hydrogenated fats or pre-mixed spice selections). You will also find varying weekly 'specials' highlighting seasonal produce.
Our chefs have a passion to bring you both traditional fare and fusion food from around the globe - it is not unusual to find Scotch eggs, Thai vegetable curry, steak and Stilton pasties, Mexican chimichangas, fish creole and more.
Lots of people talk about 'cooking with passion'. What does that mean? Well, for us it means creating recipes and cooking dishes that use top quality ingredients, fresh or organic where possible, locally sourced where practical. Most importantly, we believe that food should be made fresh from key 'base' ingredients....so, our ' house' tomato sauce is made from tomatoes, herbs, onion, seasoning - no thickeners or flavour enhancers; we prepare our own clotted cream from fresh local cream and enjoy the 20 hour process it takes to get it just right for the Cream Teas; we make our own fruit chutneys and pickles from scratch, loving the chance to enjoy summer's harvest right through the year; we prepare our own fruit-packed sauces and syrups from fresh fruit for our milkshakes... you get the idea.
We use real butter, quality olive oil, various sugars, blend our own spices and grow our own herbs. Passion, for us, is as much about rigorous selection of the ingredients we wish to start the cooking process with as it is about serving up the finished dish.
To see our core menu please click here and visit us to learn about our weekly specials.
Awards & Recognition
Established 20th December 2017, Birkinshaw's is still new to the area, but we are thrilled to have received awards and National coverage for our 'little bit of England'.