Faru

About Faru

Walk past the neutral exterior on Silver Street and you could easily miss it. The signage is deliberately understated, the frontage gives nothing away, and that restraint continues inside: baby-blue walls, well-spaced circular tables, and an open kitchen that turns the act of cooking into part of the room's architecture. An antique stained-glass window sits behind the pass, giving the chefs a quietly theatrical backdrop without tipping into showiness. The space is intimate without being cramped, and the table spacing means you are not conducting your dinner in someone else's conversation.

The kitchen is run by Jake Siddle, who spent nine years at Newcastle's House of Tides before opening Faru with his wife Laura, who manages front of house with a team described as well-drilled and genuinely knowledgeable. That background matters because Moor Hall and L'Enclume have demonstrated what a tightly run husband-and-wife operation can produce at the highest level of British dining. Faru is not yet in that conversation, but the Michelin recognition and the consistency of the cooking suggest it is moving in the right direction.

The menu leans on sourcing choices that are specific enough to read as deliberate rather than decorative. Cambodian Kampot pepper on the duck, Sichuan pepper elsewhere, an Oliver Zeter Sauvignon Blanc Fumé from the Pfalz in the wine pairing — these are not generic premium ingredients, they are calls made by a kitchen that has thought about why one ingredient works better than another. The hen of the woods mushroom dish, built around chive emulsion, pak choi, chicken fat, yeast crumb, and mushroom dashi, is a good example of how sourcing and technique interact here: each component has a reason to be on the plate, and the result is the kind of umami depth that takes time and attention to construct. A spiral milk bread roll with bacon jam is served alongside to ensure none of the dashi is left behind, which tells you something about how the kitchen thinks about the full eating experience rather than just the headline dish.

Pork beignet with apple and vanilla custard, barbecued lamb glazed with black garlic, and lobster tart fill out the savoury sequence with punchy, precise flavour combinations. Honey- and orange-glazed duck comes with smoked beetroot dusted in Kampot pepper, caramelised chicory chutney, and a fried press of potato and duck leg , a dish that earns its place at the end of the savoury run. Desserts maintain the same standard: a hazelnut parfait with praline base, rum jelly, raisin gel, hazelnut and chocolate tuile, and banana sorbet is technically accomplished without tipping into over-complication. Coffee arrives with two petits fours , a lemon cheesecake and a lime and pineapple jelly , that round out the meal rather than padding it.

Wine pairing across ten courses opens with an English sparkling wine and moves through five bottles, with the Oliver Zeter Sauvignon Blanc Fumé as a notable inclusion , oaked and flinty, it is a more interesting choice than the standard Sancerre-adjacent selections you see at this price point. If wine pairings are important to you, this is a stronger programme than most regional tasting menu restaurants offer.

For a returning visitor, the ten-course dinner is the format that shows the kitchen at full stretch. The five-course lunch is a reasonable entry point, but the longer menu is where the sourcing logic and the structural thinking of the cooking become fully legible. If you are planning a special occasion dinner in Durham, Faru is the booking to make. For a lighter commitment, the lunch format works, though you will leave wanting to come back for the full run. Booking is moderately difficult , this is a small, high-demand room , so plan at least two to three weeks ahead for dinner, more for weekend slots. The restaurant is at 29 Silver Street, Durham DH1 3RD, centrally located and walkable from the city centre.

For context on how Faru sits within the broader regional tasting menu category, CORE by Clare Smyth, The Fat Duck, Gidleigh Park, and Hand and Flowers represent the benchmark tier for British tasting menus at the highest level. Faru is not in that price bracket, which makes the technical ambition of the kitchen here more notable, not less. For international reference points in modern cuisine, Frantzén in Stockholm and FZN by Björn Frantzén in Dubai show where this style of precision-sourced tasting menu cooking operates at its most developed. Faru is, by any honest measure, operating at a different scale , but the sourcing intelligence and structural discipline on display in Durham point to a kitchen that understands what it is working towards.

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