Surrey Hills · Silent Pool
It usually starts as a walk, a quick coffee, or a stop after the pool. Then somebody orders samosas, somebody suggests chai, and the afternoon quietly disappears.
Silent Pool itself is worth the walk, two minutes from us and properly atmospheric. Around it you have the North Downs Way, Newlands Corner, Albury, Silent Pool Distillers and Albury Organic Vineyard, all within easy reach.
Mandira's Kitchen is the food part of the day: a 400-year-old converted cowshed above the pool, serving Indian lunches, Afternoon Tea, cakes, chai and seasonal events, seven days a week, in the middle of the Surrey Hills.
What you actually eat here
Lunch, seven days a week
Lunch is Indian street food, the kind Mandira grew up eating, not a curry-house menu. Samosa chaat with tamarind drizzle, papri chaat, biryani, kathi rolls, keema pav, the forbidden chilli cheese toast, all handmade with our own chutneys. Chai ice cream and lychee martini sorbet if you have room. Gluten-free options. Eat in the barn or out on the patio over the pool. Booking a table is wise, especially at weekends.
The weekend thali
At weekends we make a limited number of thalis: a round platter of small dishes that changes every week, and comes with a Bollywood playlist, a film recommendation and a quiz, because a thali should be an afternoon, not a plate. They must be pre-booked and are picked up Friday or Saturday. If you are further afield or on the monthly subscription, we can post one (it arrives the Tuesday after).
Freezer meals to take home
The same food, cooked by hand in small batches in the barn and frozen the same day, never cooked from frozen in a factory. Take a stack home from the cafe after lunch, or have them delivered anywhere in the UK in insulated boxes, free over £100. Larger trays for four or ten when people are coming over and you would rather they thought you cooked.
A barn above one of England's strangest pools
Silent Pool is a spring-fed former chalk quarry on the Albury Estate, so still and so clear it looks lit from below. Tennyson came here to think. Agatha Christie's car was found just up the hill at Newlands Corner in 1926. There is a legend about a girl called Emma and a king on a horse, which may be Victorian invention but is told anyway, usually in a lowered voice. Our barn sits on the track just above all of it, where pilgrims once walked the old North Downs way and the smell of ground cardamom now drifts across the hills by mid-morning. Four hundred years a cowshed. These days, something rather better fed.
Good questions, briefly answered
What is there to do near Silent Pool?
Walk the Silent Pool trail and the North Downs Way, visit Newlands Corner, Silent Pool Distillers and Albury Organic Vineyard, and stop at Mandira's Kitchen for Indian food, chai and Afternoon Tea above the pool.
Is Silent Pool free to visit?
Yes, the pool and surrounding trails are free to walk. Mandira's Kitchen is about two minutes away with free parking when you register at the cafe.
Is it good for a day out?
Yes. A walk, the pool, the vineyard or distillery nearby, and a long lunch or Afternoon Tea at Mandira's Kitchen makes an easy full day in the Surrey Hills, about an hour from London.
Where is Mandira's Kitchen?
Silent Pool, Shere Road, Albury, Guildford, Surrey GU5 9BW, just off the A25 between Guildford and Dorking.
Book your visit to Mandira's Kitchen
Open seven days a week, on the track above Silent Pool.
Book your visit to Mandira's Kitchen →