Valentine’s Cook At Home Delights

Valentine’s Day!

Our cook at home kits for Valentine’s Day 2021 are on sale now.

While we can’t invite you to the Geese and Fountain to celebrate Valentine’s Day in the usual way, we can still help you have a very special evening with the one you love.

Everything you need for a romantic meal for two, to collect from the pub on February 12th or 13th, or delivered straight to your door – now with NATIONWIDE DELIVERY available.

Simply call 01476 870350 or message us to place your order.

Starters

Roasted tomato soup, parmesan crouton, basil flatbread (V)

Smoked salmon & pesto tartlets, lemon & dill mayonnaise
Duck spring rolls, hoisin & sweet chilli, pickled carrot

Mains

20oz Côte de Boeuf Steak (for two to share)
Confit potatoes, sauce diane, purple sprouting broccolli, honey roasted parsnip, carrot puree

Artichoke, wild mushroom and cheese pie
Red wine gravy, swede mash, hispi cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli, roast carrots (V)

Baked sea bream with leeks and carrots
Fondant potatoes, seared hispi cabbage, parsley sauce

Sun-dried tomato and paprika gnocchi
Melton charcuterie coppa and chorizo red pesto, winter salad

Desserts

Red and white wine poached pears, caramelised hazelnut cream

Elderflower roasted forced rhubarb and custard panna cotta with ginger crumble

Chocolate mousse cups, freeze dried raspberries

Collection or delivery on Feb 12th or 13th 2021.

£60 for two, £10 supplement for steak.

Local delivery (within 6 miles of Croxton kerrial) is free.

Delivery between 6 and 15 miles is £5

Delivery beyond 15 miles by courier (next-day) is £12

Beers and wines for Christmas

We know that Christmas in 2020 is not going to be like other years. But we want to help everyone have the best possible Christmas celebrations, even if you can’t come to the pub for the time being.

So we’ve put together some spectacular deals on beers, wines, and more for all your Christmas and New Year drinking needs. As you’d expect from the Geese and Fountain, these are not run-of-the-mill drinks, far from it. Great craft beers from some of the best little breweries in Britain and around the world, wonderful organic wines made with love by family-run vineyards caring for the soil, the vines and the finished product, carefully compiled selections of artisan small batch gin and whiskey – whatever your tastes and budget, we have something for everyone.

We’ve put all the deals together into one Christmas Drinks Offers booklet – download it and choose your drinks for the festive period. Fill in the order form and drop it in to the pub, post it back to us, or email / facebook message / WhatsApp your order to us and we’ll arrange everything.

Extra Christmas Discount

If you want a more personalised beer selection, remember we stock over 100 different beers in our cellar, from barley wines to low alcohol options, from lagers to barrel aged stouts. We currently have an extra discount available for all Christmas beer collections and deliveries. You can download an order form, to browse our stock and make your choices, then just return it to us, and we will put together a box of beers just for you.

Perfect Christmas Presents – free gift packaging

We also have Christmas gift packaging available. Pick any three beers from our stock list, and we will put them into a Christmas gift box free of charge.

Give your cook the night off

Remember that you can combine any drinks order with either picking up a take-away or collecting a ‘cook at home’ version of our Christmas menu.

Cook-at-home Christmas meals

We’ve just put out a press release announcing our ‘cook-at-home’ Christmas meal boxes. If you’d like to download a PDF of it, here it is.

Can’t go to the pub? Bring the pub to you!

Cook-at-home restaurant quality meals launched by Leicestershire pub

Even the government announcement that Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire are all in the toughest Covid Tier from December 2nd isn’t enough to ruin Christmas in one small Leicestershire village. The Geese & Fountain, the award-winning pub in Croxton Kerrial, Leicestershire, have found a new way to keep the Christmas spirit alive – selling three-course Christmas dinners throughout December as both TAKE-AWAY and COOK-AT-HOME options.

The pub, which has been serving take-aways throughout lockdown based on its regular menus and also special theme take-aways including a “Kerrial Fried Chicken” night, has launched a Christmas menu which can be ordered either as a ready-to-eat take-away or as a cook-at-home kit, which will include all the elements of a restaurant-quality meal, carefully prepared and packaged with full instructions so that customers can complete and present their Christmas feast to perfection.

Chef at the Geese & Fountain, Kate Ahrens, explained, “This has been such a difficult year for everyone, and the latest round of restrictions are going to have a massive impact on everyone’s Christmas celebrations. No work parties, no trips to the pub, no extended family get-togethers. We wanted to make sure that we were helping to make the Christmas period as special as we can, and offering a cook-at-home version of our restaurant quality meals is one way to do that. You can order a box for your house, and one for your friends, family, or work colleagues, and eat the meals together over a Zoom call. Or you can pick up a box from us on Christmas Eve and save yourself all the stress of Christmas dinner preparation.”

The menu, available on the pub’s website (www.thegeeseandfountain.co.uk), features geese and turkeys raised in the same village as the pub itself, by Gerald Botterill and his son Richard, as well as prawn, chorizo and chicken paella, oven-baked sea trout, beef wellington (using beef reared on the nearby Belvoir estate), and leek, mushroom and lentil Christmas pie. Starters include goose liver pate and lemon and garlic king prawns, while alongside traditional Christmas puddings, there are brandy clementines, a whisky and honeycomb parfait, and even a stem ginger and clotted cream baked Alaska – supplied frozen for you to pop in the oven for a few minutes just before serving. All dishes come with their own specific instructions, making sure the experience of cooking the meal at home is as simple as can be.

Kate continues, “We know that Christmas this year won’t be the same for anybody. But having a meal cooked for you, with all the care and attention that we always bring to our menu when the pub is open, and made with the fantastic quality local produce that comes from the Vale of Belvoir and the surrounding countryside can still be a wonderful part of the festivities. The Government restrictions mean that all take-aways must be pre-ordered, but we can take orders by phone (01476 870350), through our website or our facebook page, or even by WhatsApp to 07593 782662.”

The Geese and Fountain is recognised as the best pub in the Vale of Belvoir by CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, so it’s no surprise that you can add to your cook-at-home box (or your take-away) a huge selection of great quality beers, or bottles of organic wine. Beers available include those from local breweries like Brewsters in Grantham, or Round Corner in Melton Mowbray, and also international offerings and beers from leading breweries all over the UK.

ENDS

Further information:

The cook-at-home boxes are available for collection from the Geese and Fountain, or for free delivery within six miles of Croxton Kerrial. Delivery from 7 to 20 miles away can be arranged, but will cost £5.

Alongside the ready-to-eat versions of the meals, collection and delivery can be arranged on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays in December, from 2nd December until the 24th. Collections available from 5pm to 8pm.

Cook at home boxes will be good for 36 hours if stored appropriately, which means boxes collected on Christmas Eve will be perfect on Christmas Day.

Both cook-at-home and ready-to-eat versions of the menu are charged at £21 for two courses, £25 for three, with children’s portions available at £15 and £18 respectively. Full details are on the pub’s website at http://www.thegeeseandfountain.co.uk/

Contact Nick Holden at the Geese & Fountain for more: 01476 870350.

Craft Beer Advent Calendars

With Christmas around the corner we are once again offering our specialist Craft Beer Advent Calendars for December 2020. For only £75 you get 24 beers from some of our favourite breweries, both UK and international, with a wide selection of styles from IPAs and sours to stouts and porters. What’s more, we can also offer a personalised selection – so if you want 24 dark beers, or 24 lagers, or 24 vegan beers, or even 24 gluten free beers, then we can do that for you at no extra cost. Or we can go ‘all out’ and put together an even more specialised selection at an agreed price.

Pick up your advent calendar from the pub during the last week of November, or have one delivered to you if you live within our delivery area (FREE delivery within six miles of Croxton Kerrial, £5 p&p for between seven and ten miles, all of Melton Mowbray, Grantham, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester. Please note this is a personalised direct delivery service, NOT a courier.

To order, please contact us now – either by completing this form, phoning 01476 870350 or by emailing nick@thegeeseandfountain.co.uk

Merry Christmas!

Christmas 2020: take away and ‘cook at home’ options

Christmas this year is likely to be very different.

But at the Geese and Fountain we are determined to help you have the best possible Christmas, even if we can’t host big parties or the usual extended family get-togethers.

What we can do is provide you with the best ingredients for a family Christmas meal at home. And if things change, and we are allowed to open, we’re ready and waiting to serve you.

So for Christmas 2020 we are delighted to launch our Christmas meal take away options and ‘cook at home’ packs for the very first time. Exactly the same quality ingredients, prepared by us to our usual high standards, but then packaged in one of two ways:

Take away meals are cooked to perfection, all set for you to collect or us to deliver piping hot and ready to eat.
Cook at home packs are prepared by us, and then packaged, chilled or frozen (as appropriate) for you to take home (either collection or local delivery available) and finish off at a time that suits you. Full instructions will be supplied with your pack, and the contents will be great even 24 hours after your booked time, which means for the first time ever you can pick up a G&F Christmas meal on Christmas Eve and cook it yourself to perfection on Christmas Day itself.

Both options can come with additional drinks, from our extensive selections of beers, wines, ciders and more. Just talk to us about your preferences, and we will be happy to help make your Christmas 2020 extra special.

You can use our usual booking system to reserve a slot for either a collection or a local delivery, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays throughout December. Delivery is free up to six miles from Croxton Kerrial, and just £5 between six and fifteen miles.

You can also make a provisional booking for a table at the pub, or for one of our Family Dining Rooms, for Saturday 19th December, Wednesday 23rd or Thursday 24th. We are hoping that Leicestershire will be moved down from tier three to tier two when the Government reviews the situation on December 16th, and we expect to be able to open from the 19th if that happens. If it turns out that we are not allowed to open, we will happily convert all table reservations into either take-away or cook-at-home orders.

Full details on the take away and cook at home options are on the menu below. Prices are £21 for two courses, £25 for three courses (children at £15 and £18 respectively), meal choices need to be submitted five days prior to your reservation date, and at that point a non-refundable deposit of £10 per person is required.

Please get in touch if you have any questions, or if you would like to book.

Christmas Menu 2020

Autumn changes at the Geese and Fountain

With August coming to an end – and the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme along with it – we’re looking at the next few months and how we should move forward. The current social distancing measures don’t look as though they’re going to change anytime soon, so we won’t be able to go back to having all 16 tables inside for a while (probably not until next year) and the weather is going to make the beer garden less of an option. So we are going to clear the darts area and the library area and put two more tables back in, so we will be able to seat more customers inside the pub.

Private dining rooms

We’re also going to convert the three downstairs B&B rooms into ‘private dining rooms’ and put a table in each of them. As the weather gets colder these rooms will help to maximise the number of indoor covers we can offer. You will soon be able to reserve a specific room for your party of up to six people, allowing you to have a special function in a secluded (and fully socially distanced) space, complete with your own ‘en suite’ facilities!

Opening hours changes

We’ve also decided that we’re going to close on Mondays and Tuesdays during the next three months. We’ll be able to concentrate our staff on working the busier days, and not spend money on heating, lights and staff for times when we’d often only have one or two customers in the pub. We understand that will be a disappointment for some customers, who like a quiet pint or a meal on a Monday or Tuesday evening, but the levels of trade at the moment (especially the low numbers of B&B bookings) means it is just not viable for us to be open all day, seven days a week. We’re sure we’ll be back to being ‘open all hours’ in due course, but just not yet.

This will mean our monthly pub quiz will be moving back online for the next few months and we’ll also be bringing back some of the events from lockdown like ‘Cooking with Kate’ and the virtual beer tasting so that we will be holding 2 ‘at home’ events a month.

At the other end of the week, however, we’ll be opening up again on Saturday mornings and offering breakfast for the first time since March. You will shortly be able to book tables for Saturday morning breakfasts using our online ‘table agent’ booking system, just as you can for lunches and dinners. Lots of people have been asking us about breakfasts, so we look forward to seeing you back in for your “Croxton Farmer’s Breakfast” on Saturday mornings.

Staff changes

We’re also saying goodbye to a few members of staff this month. Michael is moving on to work at a pub nearer to his family’s new home. Millie is going back to University in Cardiff, although we hope to have her back at Christmas. Emily has left us to pursue her own business, which is a very exciting venture for her. And Abbie will be leaving us soon – to take on a great opportunity, which we will share with you all soon. We’re very grateful for all their hard work, and wish them all well in the future.

Thank you

Lastly we wanted to say thank you. The last six months have been the strangest and most difficult in the five years we’ve been open and we wouldn’t have been able to get through them without the support of such wonderful customers. Lockdown was challenging in many ways, but the re-opening period has been even more challenging. The way everyone has accomodated to our new ways of working, recognising how difficult things have been for our staff, and not making things any more difficult than they needed to be, has been very much appreciated by all of us. We hope we’ve helped you to feel safe at the Geese and Fountain, and that your visits here have still been fun, and enjoyable. We hope to share many more good times with you over the next few months, and we’re already starting to think about Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

Special offers for August 2020

Welcome back to the Geese and Fountain!

It’s been a strange few months, but now we’re open again, we have three special offers for customers coming back to the pub this month.

Welcome back meal deal

Firstly, our ‘Welcome Back’ meal deal, which is available whenever we’re serving food on Mondays to Saturdays during August, offers you a two course meal from our regular menu (either Lunch or Dinner) and a complimentary drink for just £20 per person.

Download the lunch or dinner menu and then call us on 01476 870350 to book.

Eat Out To Help Out

Secondly, we are taking part in the government’s Eat Out To Help Out scheme, which means that on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays throughout August the government will pay half your bill – up to a maximum of £10 per person. Alcoholic drinks are not included, but pretty much everything else is. So whether it’s a three course dinner or a quick coffee and a flapjack the government will pay half, up to the £10 limit. You can use the scheme as many times as you like, so come for morning coffee, lunch and dinner in the same day – and save £30!

You can even combine these two offers together – and get a two course meal with a free drink for just a tenner! Order the ‘Welcome Back’ deal on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, and we’ll apply both offers, and charge you just £10.

Download the lunch or dinner menu and then call us on 01476 870350 to book.

Summer Staycation: One-night Holiday for £80

Thirdly, we have a very special ‘summer staycation’ offer. A night’s stay in one of our comfortable double or twin rooms, complete with dinner (two courses, options including specials) and a complimentary drink, and then a fabulous ‘Full English’ the next morning, for just £80 all-in. It’s the best value one-night holiday you can imagine.

The offer is available on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights throughout August, except August 31st. Offer is subject to a room being available. Full details available on request, please call 01476 870350 to book in.

American Express Shop Small – get a fiver back too!

As if these offers weren’t amazing enough, you can also get a £5 cash refund to your card account if you pay us by American Express at the moment. They have a promotional campaign called “Shop Small” which means if you spend £10 or more in a suitable small venue, American Express will refund you £5. So combine our Welcome Back deal, the Eat Out To Help Out scheme and the American Express Shop Small offer, and get a two course meal including a free drink for just £5!

For more details see: https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/benefits/shop-small/

We’re back!

And the beer is better than ever

It’s been a long and very strange three months of home deliveries, veg boxes and off-sales only, but we’re delighted to have the doors of the Geese and Fountain open once again.

Please book your table in advance if you can. Come to the front door when you arrive, and we’ll explain the new arrangements. All drinks and food will be served at your table. See below for full details.

Hours

We are taking it slow – for the time being we are open on reduced hours:

Mondays: 5pm – 10pm (food from 5.30pm – 8.30pm)
Tuesdays: 5pm – 10pm (food from 5.30pm – 8.30pm)
Wednesdays: midday – 10pm (food from 12.30pm – 2.30pm and 5.30pm – 8.30pm)
Thursdays: midday – 10pm (food from 12.30pm – 2.30pm and 5.30pm – 8.30pm)
Fridays: midday – 10pm (food from 12.30pm – 2.30pm and 5.30pm – 8.30pm)
Saturdays: midday – 10pm (food all day from 12.30pm – 8.30pm)
Sundays: midday – 4pm (food from midday – 3.30pm)

These are likely to be our hours for the remainder of July and August.

Food

Our menus are a little less comprehensive than before. We have to follow social distancing and safety measures in the kitchen as well as in the pub itself, so we can’t do quite so many specials and sharing boards as we used to. We hope things will get back to normal soon, but in the meantime, we are confident that the food we are offering is up to our exacting standards.

Rooms

Our B&B rooms are available again. But also on reduced availability, because after each booking we leave the room for 48 hours before it is re-used.

Changes

We have removed approximately half of our tables, but also invested a great deal into our outdoor areas so that you can enjoy time at the pub, even if you can’t fit in the pub!

We are following government guidance to ensure that our staff and our customers are safe. We have a nine page risk assessment which we are happy to share with any customers who would like to see it, and a brief summary of all our changes are explained with a leaflet on each table. It’s different to how things used to be, but we hope the warm welcome and the great food and drink are the same.

Before you arrive

TABLE BOOKINGS are advisable, and preferable, as they help us to plan, even if you are only coming for drinks and not food. Use the booking tool on this website, send us a message on facebook or phone us on 01476 870350 and we will book you in. We will have a small number of tables inside and a larger number of tables outside. We will not be setting time limits to your visits, or imposing a deposit or booking charge. If you do not book, you are still welcome to visit the Geese and Fountain but we cannot guarantee that we will have a table available for you.

Please DO NOT come to the Geese and Fountain if you, or anyone you live with, have symptoms of Covid-19. There will be no cancellation fees. Just ring us and say you’re not well and can’t come, and we will be very grateful.

We will restrict bookings to tables of 6 for the time being. Government guidelines state that you can ‘meet with one other household or bubble’ indoors, or in groups of 6 from multiple households or bubbles outdoors – but that you should continue to practice social distancing. So if you are arranging to meet other households at the pub, please advise us on booking, so we can allocate the right number of neighbouring tables.

When you arrive

When you arrive at the Geese and Fountain please come in through the FRONT DOOR. We will greet you and tell you which table(s) we have available for you. Please go to your table before ordering. All your drinks, menus, food, cutlery and so on will be brought to you at your table. Make the most of the luxury and let us wait on you!

We don’t have ‘an app’ for ordering, all your orders will be taken at your table by our staff, but we do use the Real Ale Finder app to list all the beers, lagers, ales and ciders that we have available. If you download the app, you will know what we have available, and that will save time when you are placing your order.

Please wash your hands or use sanitiser on arrival, before leaving, and each time you use the toilets. There is sanitiser in several places around the pub for you to use.

There will be a ONE WAY system (the front door is IN only, the car park door is OUT only). There will also be one way systems in the garden at busy times.

Please fill in a paper slip with your contact details, so that we can provide them to NHS Test and Trace if necessary. These slips will not be used for any other purpose and will be destroyed after 21 days.

There will be a page of information on the table like this:

We hope it will help explain what we’re doing to keep you safe. Please read it while you’re waiting for your server to take your order.

The corridor behind the bar is now STAFF ONLY. The ladies toilet has moved to one of our B&B rooms. Please follow the signs. Both the ladies and the gents will be one person at a time only.

And finally…

There are a few signs around, and a helpful info sheet on all the tables. Please READ them, and follow the guidance, and the information provided to you during your visit by our team. It is all being done for your safety and protection. We know some of you will find it very different from your usual pub visits, but it is all about safety for customers and staff alike. If you’ve got any questions, we’ll be happy to answer them for you: we want you to be reassured that we’re doing everything appropriate to keep you safe.

So if you’ve missed your visits to the pub, whether for food, drinks or an overnight stay, please give us a call on 01476 870350 and we’ll be delighted to welcome you back.

Take-Away Menus – for the Covid-19 crisis period

Hi Everyone,

We seem to be writing updates almost on a daily basis at the moment, which is very odd. The ground shifts under us all the time, what it is safe or prudent for us to do, as a business, changing every hour, balancing our need to stay in business with the health risks for our customers and our staff.

Some pubs are already closed completely, others seem to be almost at “business as usual”. We think we are somewhere in between. We have removed some tables to spread out the customers who do come in, we’re cleaning everything over and over again, and we’re also stepping up other ways we can serve our community, and especially those of you who are self-isolating or simply don’t want to be out and about at the current time.

So we are pleased to announce our new ‘Take Away Menu’. This will be available from today onwards, Mondays to Saturdays. We are also working on Take Away Sunday Lunch, which should be on offer from this weekend, so keep checking back in for information on that. And we also intend to roll out a delivery service to Croxton Kerrial and the surrounding villages, starting in the next few days.

We will continue to find new ways to support our community for as long as we can do so safely, and with the ongoing support of our staff, our customers and the other businesses we rely on, we will see you out the other side of this crisis for a very, very big party! In the meantime, please do order your take-aways either by phoning the pub on 01476 870350 or by using the messaging facility on our facebook page.

Many thanks for your continued custom in such difficult circumstances.

And the household essentials shopping list is:

Change in Opening Hours

In the face of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, and the absolute priority that we are putting on keeping our staff, our customers and our business safe, we are making some small changes to our opening hours from tomorrow, Thursday, March 19th, until further notice.

The pub will no longer open for breakfast. This is a sad decision for us to make, as we’re really proud of our breakfasts, but the B&B part of our business has pretty much ground to a complete halt. And in the current climate of ‘social distancing’ and ‘self isolation’ we’re not having very many people pop in for a breakfast either. By opening slightly later in the day we can adjust our staffing, spend more time on cleaning and ensuring the pub is safe for those times when it is open, and also use some of the time for working out our responses to the ever-changing situation.

As a result the Geese and Fountain opening hours are temporarily changing to:

Monday to Saturday: 10am – 11pm (food served midday until 9pm)
Sunday: 10am – 9pm (food served midday until 3pm, and 5pm until 7pm)

This will, of course, be kept under constant review. We hope to be offering breakfasts again very soon. We are still open for B&B bookings (by telephone only), and if people know anyone who needs a B&B room please do send them our way. We will offer our full breakfast options to any B&B customers we may have over the next few weeks, but we cannot set up every morning to do breakfasts with no real prospect of having any custom for them. Sorry.

Immediately, we will use the time that this saves us to prepare three things:

Firstly a greatly expanded take-away menu (not just pizzas like we currently do, but a large selection from our pub classics and dessert menus as well). A first edition of a full take away menu should be available tomorrow and we welcome take away orders from 6pm every evening and between midday and 3pm every lunch time. We hope that by Saturday we will have a plan for ‘take away Sunday lunches’ so that we can offer you a take away for this Sunday, as we really don’t want anyone disappointed on Mother’s Day.

Secondly, we will be making a commitment from Friday of this week to step in to the hole left by the understandable (and in our view entirely necessary) decision by the government to order the closure of all schools in England. While the decision is the right one, there are many children in our society who are dependent on free school meals – and who now face the prospect of many weeks without them, and possibly without hot food at all. We are therefore intending that from Friday, until further notice, ALL CHILDREN’S MEALS SERVED AT THE GEESE AND FOUNTAIN BETWEEN MIDDAY AND 3PM WILL BE FREE OF CHARGE. Each free meal will be accompanied by a complimentary glass of orange or blackcurrant cordial. This will apply to eat-in and take-away meals, to hot food from the children’s menu or to sandwiches. If it’s for a child, you won’t pay. No questions asked. We don’t care if your child was previously receiving free school meals or not, we don’t care if you are on benefits, or anything like that. We just want to ensure that no child in our community goes hungry, and this is the best way for us to do that.

Thirdly, we are exploring various option for establishing a delivery service for Croxton Kerrial (and possibly surrounding villages). We would like this to cover our take away food items, drinks from our bar, household essentials and even veg boxes. We will have more information on this very soon.

We hope this will reassure you all that a reduction in our opening hours isn’t any sign that we’re going away any time soon. We’re just focussing our energy onto those things which will do the most good for our community, our staff and our business. Keep well, and we’ll all get through this together.