Just one year into a change of ownership, Burgh Le Marsh’s Windmill Restaurant has already gained one of the county’s highest hospitality accolades. We joined owners Chris and Sharon Noble on their first anniversary to discover how the winds of change have been blowing through this quaint East Coast restaurant…

The winds of change have certainly blown through Burgh Le Marsh’s Windmill Restaurant in the past 12 months. This month sees the restaurant’s first anniversary under the new ownership of Chris and Sharon Noble, whose expertise as restaurant owners was cemented with the couple’s previous undertaking, transforming a run down pub near Louth into one of the area’s most popular eateries.

However, yearning to run a restaurant rather than a pub, and to concentrate on creating enviable à la carte menus eventually led the couple to the Windmill Restaurant in May 2007 whereupon a dramatic transformation of the venue ensued, culminating in the couple winning the Tastes of Lincolnshire Best Restaurant award for 2007/8.

Sharon is from South Somercotes whilst Chris comes from Chelmsford. The couple met in Birmingham whilst working together and moved back to Lincolnshire nine years ago, working together in the café of Louth’s Navigation Warehouse before turning the upper floor into a restaurant to generate extra revenue for the building.

After four years, the couple moved to the New Plough at Covenham which at the time was serving just 20 meals or so each week. After revamping the kitchens and transforming the venue, the restaurant was soon serving over 400 meals a week and quickly became extremely popular with locals.

 “We wanted something a little more substantial.” Says Chris. “We found the Windmill and loved it. Burgh is a lovely village and it’s a really pleasant location, but it also has some amazing local suppliers and that enables us to produce great food with local ingredients and support other local businesses.”

The restaurant was closed for  just two and a half weeks when Chris and Sharon took over, and in that time, the couple managed to refurbish and redecorate the dining room, redesign the kitchen and install brand new state-of-the-art kitchen equipment, and inaugurate a new fleet of pristine white porcelain crockery and new cutlery for a modern, up to date dining experience with a slick efficient kitchen.

Also introduced was a trio of menus which run concurrently to offer lunchtime, Sunday and à la carte diners a wealth of choice. There’s a