A popular artisan café and bakery in Whitehaven is now offering fine dining evenings.
Howling Wolf, owned by Benjamin Ardelean, 31, and his wife Carmina, 28, has gone from strength to strength since opening its doors at the bottom of The Beacon museum just under six months ago.
Ben, who is a trained chef, has previously worked in the fine dining industry and Carmina said it has always been a dream for him to step back into that world.
She said: “I think the inspiration to set the evenings up was mainly seeing a need for it in Whitehaven and knowing that Ben has the capacity to fulfil that need and that it’s always been a dream of his.
“The evenings have already been well received by the public and we’ve had bookings all the way to Christmas. It’s very exciting to see, it’s completely different to what we have during the day but people are telling us they’re loving it.”
Offering everything from pan fried scallops to racks of lamb and pears poached in red wine for dessert – Ben has worked to make the majority of his dishes gluten free for coeliacs as well as offering vegan options.
Carmina added: “It’s mostly trying to work with things that can be sourced locally from sellers, so our chicken and lamb is from the local butchers and our veg is also local.
“He’s experimenting with seasonal produce and we’re changing the menu in November and December so we’ve had people booking for the next two months to taste the next menus.”
Carmina said that at first they were worried people might not be interested in a fine dining evening but that they had been quickly proven wrong.
She said: “We decided to do a few test evenings to see how the public would receive them at first once everything cooled down after our busy summer.
“Ben came up with this menu of things I’ve never seen him cook at home, so honestly it was very new to me! But he was very excited to try some interesting dishes that you cannot serve during the day in a café.
“It has been amazing to see people be excited at the ideas we are putting out there.”
The café will celebrate six months of business in November and Carmina said they’ve already hit all the goals they had planned for the next two years.
Summer proved an incredibly busy period for the team but the duo said that they’re starting to find the business easier to manage.
She said: “After opening the café we had plenty of customers telling us we should be open in the evenings for something like the fine dining and we just didn’t have enough staff at the time. It’s been a hard summer for us adjusting to the volume of people coming in.
“Things have cooled down a bit now with children going back to school but we are still busy, that’s the main word for us around here, but it’s getting easier for us to manage!”
Alongside their new fine dining success, the café are continuing to wow people in Cumbria and beyond with their cinnamon rolls.
Carmina said: “I think we’ve now become the cinnamon roll coffee shop in Whitehaven! We’ve met with suppliers all over the Lake District and as far as Carnforth and they have said to us everyone’s talking about our cinnamon rolls.
“We always have the cinnamon rolls but Ben has also been trying to cater to fill more needs for people who don’t like cinnamon or who are allergic, so he’s created blueberry rolls, pumpkin rolls which are in season now, strawberry rolls, Biscoff rolls and Nutella rolls which are just incredible.
“He also takes on feedback from customers when he makes them, so if he hears requests for Oreo rolls again and again he experiments and sees if people like them.
“The cherry rolls he were absolutely fantastic too! It’s a bit of a playground for him really, he just gets any idea and goes for it.”
Howling Wolf is also looking to host more board game nights, quiz nights and a book swap in the future.
