Head chef Greig Young has been at The Bildeston Crown in Suffolk for less than two years. He already feels like he belongs there - and the pub, by the sounds of it, feels the same way about him.
The Bildeston Crown is a 500-year-old inn sitting at the centre of Bildeston, a small Suffolk village. It is, Greig said, bigger than it looks.
On a Sunday it can seat 120 for lunch. There are three private dining rooms and a terrace is opening soon, adding another 50 covers. On the estate, there is a butchery unit processing deer shot on the same land.
Greig came to all of this after nearly 20 years in professional kitchens, starting in Scotland at 15, taking in stints in Australia and New Zealand, and eventually settling in Suffolk a decade ago.
Just before joining The Crown in 2024, he had spent time working in a flavour laboratory for a food company - a detour he described as eye-opening, but ultimately short-lived.
He said: “If you’ve spent that long in a kitchen, it’s very hard to get out of the habit. I'm addicted to it, really.”
The food
The à la carte at The Bildeston Crown is deliberately short: five or six starters, similar for mains and five desserts.
There is no tasting menu and no fixed price for the evening service. Everything priced individually, because, as Greig put it, not everyone wants three courses and that should be fine.
“If you want a starter and bread and some sides, that’s fine,” he said.
“Someone might just fancy a main. So I think it’s good that we’re open to that.”
The menu changes often - sometimes daily - driven largely by what is ready on the estate and in the kitchen garden at nearby Nedging Hall.
Asparagus or strawberries go on when they are ready. There are walnut shoots from a tree on the estate that is close to 100 years old, alongside cherry blossom, fig leaves and apple blossom.
“You can’t buy broad bean leaves,” Greig said.
“We grow things out of interest, not out of financial gain.”
The current menu runs to a pork and date terrine with pickles, a chicken liver parfait with mustard fruits, pear and brioche, cured salmon with rhubarb and wild garlic, and venison raviolo with cheese sauce and tomato chutney. Desserts include a chocolate and pumpkin seed millefeuille with espresso caramel and mascarpone ice cream. None of it makes a fuss of itself.
“People are looking less for theatre and more for really well-cooked quality stuff,” Greig said.
“That whole extended evening - that’s gone.”
The venison
The biggest seller on the menu is also the simplest: venison haunch, peppercorn sauce, rosti chips, bitter leaves from the estate. It was not always this stripped back. When Greig first put venison on, it arrived as a more elaborate dish - and sat there, unordered. He simplified it, and it has not looked back since.
The deer come from the estate itself, where fallow, muntjac and roe are managed as part of looking after the land. Greig now processes them in an on-site butchery unit, taking the animal from field to kitchen without it leaving the estate. He was blunt about why this made sense.
“I don’t know why we’re selling New Zealand venison in Tesco,” he said.
“We’ve got so many here. It’s organic, it’s naturally lean, it tastes delicious. I don’t see the problem.”
The butchery has become a teaching tool as well. Breaking down a haunch, working around the rubs, skinning a muntjac - these are skills most chefs in professional kitchens never pick up.
“They’re going to cook it much better when they’ve prepped it themselves,” Greig said.
“It’s not an easy job.”
The pub
Greig was clear that The Bildeston Crown is a pub first, not a restaurant with a bar attached.
“We’d be doing the pub an injustice if we weren’t a place for the locals,” he said.
“And if we tried to just be a restaurant, I think we’re not serving ourselves as a pub properly.”
