Malverleys Farm & Dining opens in East End

A new dining and shopping experience has opened just south west of Newbury that hopes to bring great food and a sense of community to the area.

After several years of development, Malverleys Farm & Dining officially opened its doors on Wednesday, June 7.

Located in East End, the gift shop, deli and restaurant complex offers a holistic and forward-thinking approach to food, as well as a welcoming location for local people to meet and spend time together.

Nearly all the ingredients used in the restaurant dishes and all the produce sold in the shop has been either grown or reared on-site.

This is key to the Malverleys’ ethos of creating wholesome food from carefully sourced, sustainable produce.

Malverleys owner Emily von Opel said: “We have got to do what’s best for the planet and it is wonderful bringing the community together.”

The restaurant’s lunch and dinner menus change daily, with head chef Hugo Harrison choosing his dishes depending on what’s in season and what’s on offer in Malverleys’ on-site market garden.

The garden, located round the back of the site, has plots for a variety of different fruits, vegetables and herbs, and they are all grown without the use of pesticides to make the resulting produce fresher.

The gift shop contains a wide variety of different artisanal products, from handmade ceramics and gift items to Malverleys own candles and toiletries, with scents derived from plants found in the market garden.

Like the shop, the deli stocks Malverleys’ own produce, as well as a number of independent food products.

These include local favourites like sparkling wine from Hungerford’s Winding Wood Vineyard, or honey from Wash Water-based beekeepers Berkshire Bees.

There is also a bakery on-site, with fresh bread and pastries baked every morning that customers can buy at the deli, or enjoy with a coffee out on the patio or within Malverleys’ light and rustic interior dining space.

Mrs von Opel describes the atmosphere within Malverleys as “very intimate and personal but relaxed”.

A key cornerstone of the new business is education, with the site containing a lecture room for artisans and creators to share their skills with the community.

For example, this Saturday, watercolour artist Jasmyn Kopcsandy will be hosting a workshop where she will teach attendees how to create Japanese-style botanical paintings.

Malverleys also has plans in the future to host school educational trips, teaching children the importance of growing good produce and cooking with good ingredients.

When the plans for the commercial garden centre-style development were first submitted, they received backlash from a portion of the East End community.

However, Mrs von Opel, who is married to German-born Swiss billionaire Georg von Opel, said that initial feedback from locals who had visited before the official opening had been positive.

“People couldn’t have been more complimentary,” she said. “The locals have been blown away by it.”