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Seven ideas for amazing summer menus

By Alison Baker

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Ice cream

Seven ideas for amazing summer menus
PMA looks at innovative ideas to make summer food sales shine

1. Summer pop-ups and festival catering

Pub owners William and Emma Jack, at the Richmond Arms in West Ashling, West Sussex, will be ‘popping-up’ in an iconic 1955 Morris J street kitchen this summer.

The pair, who currently serve pizzas at the Richmond Arms, which are cooked in an old Citroen H van next to the pub, are launching another concept in Bosham, near Chichester, also in West Sussex.

They will cook food in the Morris J van and serve it to customers at a recently acquired seafront deli in the coastal village.

The couple will be offering local seafood tapas, small plates, salads and take-away seafood by day, with a set menu of starter, one main and a dessert in the evening.

Festival, the new pop-up bar at Archer Street in London’s Soho, will be inspired by festivals from all around Europe this summer. Recreating Coachella, Glastonbury, Burning Man and Lovebox, the summer party venue will feature a stage, private winnebagos, glow sticks and a photo booth stacked with quirky props. Cocktails will be served in camping mugs and wellington boots. A selection of bar snacks will also be available, as well as buffet and canapé menus

2. Summer desserts

Ice-&-Slice-gelato-summer-m

Thanks to the nation’s new-found love for the Great British Bake Off​ sweet, desserts are very much back on the menu. Pub caterers should consider putting a fresh spin on quintessentially English puds such as summer pudding and Eton mess with ideas including Eton mess sundaes and ice cream.

Or why not use drinks like Pimm’s and gin to add interest with the likes of Pimm’s jelly with mint ice, Pimm’s and berries terrine, and gin & tonic sorbet. Or play on the trend for nostalgia by offering childhood favourites, such as the ice lolly, with an adult twist.

Bristol’s the Apple is launching its own range of cider lollies this summer.

Manager Rory Willis believes that the ices, made in-house using a range of ciders including the bar’s very own 8.4% ABV ‘Old Bristolian’, will be a best-seller.

Pimm’s-spiked ice lollies are also on the menu at bar/restaurant York & Albany in London this summer. The boozy ices sit alongside a DIY ice cream machine which will be offering soft serve scoops of strawberry cheesecake with candy floss and caramel popcorn.

Ice & Slice in Fulham, west London, is creating special floral gelato flavours for Chelsea Flower Show week later this month.

Flavours include violet rose, elderflower and lavender and feature toppings such as edible flowers and fresh fruit.

3.Picnics and hampers

As summer settles upon us, the British mind turns, inevitably, to picnics, providing licensees with an opportunity to increase covers, and free-up scarce table space, by offering alfresco feasts to take away.

Situated on the edge of Ealing Common, the Grange is planning to make the most of its location by launching picnic hampers for guests to enjoy in the pub’s garden or to take on to the common.

Manager Barbara Smith says: “We will be offering ploughman’s hampers for the garden, but also larger hampers, which will include choices of soft drink, craft beer or Champagne, for guests to take on to the common opposite the pub. We also have mini hampers, which include pork pies and our home-made apricot and mustard relish.”

Smith explains that by offering the hampers, she hopes to ease pressure in the kitchen. “As the garden gets busy, our guests are looking for lunches to enjoy outside and we’re looking for ways to have things ready as quickly as possible” she says. “As well as a leisurely picnic, the hampers are ideal for those looking for a quick lunch and for corporate groups, using our function rooms for meetings, who are looking for a sharing lunch for their clients/staff.”

Basket case

The Apple in Bristol started selling its Farmhand’s picnic baskets two years ago. “Being a bar on board a barge, the majority of our customers choose to sit outside on our quayside” explains Willis. “We wanted to do something fun and novel with the way we delivered our food and felt that hampers would fit with our alfresco dining experience” he adds.

Picnics arrive in a basket at the table with cutlery and boards to eat from.

The UK’s great heritage of afternoon tea provides chefs with further opportunities to add new twists to the indulgent British tradition.

Celebrate Afternoon Tea Week, which runs from 10-16 August, with an ice cream tea, as found on the menu at London’s Dorchester hotel, or inspired by a Summer in the City tea, complete with jelly cocktails, mojito macaroons and chocolate mousse mini ice cream cones, at Emmeline’s Lounge in London’s St James’s.

Following a refurbishment, Young’s Hotels site, the Bull’s Head, at Chislehurst, Kent, has unveiled its new tea room.

The 26-cover tea room’s offering will include a gin-inspired option served with a Hendrick’s Gin Flora Dora tea-cup cocktail.

Meanwhile, Knightsbridge hotel the Park Tower offers a strawberry afternoon tea — with a portable boxed cake stand for customers to enjoy alfresco or at home.

5. Making the most of your outdoor space

At the York & Albany in Regent’s Park, London, a beach hut pop-up will feature this summer . Would-be day-trippers can pull up a deckchair or chill with a drink on the sand surrounding the candy-coloured striped beach hut. Cocktails such as seaweed Martinis and Bacardi slushies will be served in mini buckets, with spades for spoons, while traditional seaside favourites with a twist, such as mini fish and chips, Cumberland sausage finger rolls and pickled seafood, will also be on the menu.

English country garden

Listed in Time Out​’s top 10 beer gardens in London, Young’s pub, the Castle in Tooting , boasts bookable wooden mini castles for parties of up to 20 people. A new burger shack has also opened in the pub’s garden.

Also shedding its winter coat is the Sky Pod, a seasonally changing cocktail bar 35 floors up, at London’s Sky Garden.

The Eccentric English Country Garden pop-up , complete with faux lawns, sunshine-yellow daffodils and vintage bicycles,
runs until the end of June and offers a bar food and sharing boards menu and is accompanied by live music every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.

Pizza eases pressure

Keen to ease pressure on its kitchen and waiting staff, the Jacobs Inn in Wolvercote, Oxford, uses a field kitchen and outdoor bar during the summer months. Now in its
third year, the outdoor kitchen will, for the first time, offer a handmade pizza menu to garden-situated guests at weekends and on bank holidays.

Assistant manager at the Marston’s pub, David Kennedy, says: “The pizza menu has been introduced in response to customer demand, but also to alleviate pressure because we also have two outside terraces offering table service for 200 seats. Customers order at the bar and help themselves when it’s ready.”

6. Summer sandwiches and salads

Gin-and-Tonicsalmonmess

Inspired by a Cornish fishing village, Vintage Salt, the latest incarnation of Selfridges & Co’s rooftop restaurant in London, will be offering diners a British seaside dining experience, during its five-month summer residency.

Lighter options from the pop-up’s Beech Oven menu include lobster and avocado butties with cocktail dressing and fish finger sandwiches with minted peas.

Salads, include Earl Grey tea smoked salmon with Jersey Royals and horseradish, and dressed Cornish crab.

Chelsea brasserie, Gallery Mess, whose menu is provided by caterers Rhubarb Food Design, will be offering gin  and tonic cured salmon with pickled cucumber on its alfresco terrace this summer,  in conjunction with supplier Sipsmith.

7. Barbecues with a difference 

The barbecue season has already kicked off this year at the Crabtree in Lower Beeding, West Sussex. Alongside a regular programme of traditional barbecues and hog roasts, the Hall & Woodhouse tenancy has, in the past, offered more unusual barbecue fare in order to drive trade.

Owner-manager Hamish Adamson-Hope says: “With quite a large polo and horse riding clientele at the pub, we thought it would be a good idea to offer a traditional Argentinian asado barbecue, with the whole lamb being cooked in the ground.

“We served it with some traditional sauces and salads, and it was a great way to drive Sunday night trade.”

Caribbean kick

Jamaican-style food, such as the jerk chicken served by the Ladywell Tavern in Lewisham, London, at its monthly Bring Your Own Vinyl parties, provides another good barbecue alternative.

The Enterprise Inns pub’ welcomes more than 40 people to each of its Friday night parties, offering barbecued jerk chicken with salad to party-goers. Guests add side dishes, ordered from the pub’s regular menu, to accompany their meal.

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