Michelle Lenton – Baker, Wife, Step Mum & Culinary Experimenter
I live in the beautiful and abundant county of Lincolnshire with my husband Peter. I was born in England but from the age of six I spent a large part of my life living abroad with my parents and sister. I have been lucky enough to have lived in Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia and travelled to lots of places while working for Air New Zealand and American Airlines in their Sydney based offices. I returned to the UK in my late twenties where I discovered a passion for food when I met and married Peter, a wonderfully talented chef and my biggest champion.
I spent many years working in catering in a variety of environments including food led pubs, hotels and social clubs. Prior to moving to Lincolnshire I spent 8 years as an office manager for an IT support and unified communications company in Cambridgeshire.
Peter Lenton – Chef, Husband, Master of Sarcasm & Quality Control Taster
I trained as a chef from the age of 16 at Henley College in Coventry. I was lucky enough to spend 6 months on work experience in Oberammergau, Bavaria in Germany. During my career I reached the position of Executive Head Chef with Forte Hotels during my 40 years in the food industry. I have worked in a variety of environments including hotels, corporate catering and conference centres.
Our Journey
We spent nearly 2 years converting the almost derelict coach house at the old Grainthorpe Mill into a usable up-to-date space where we opened the Watts for Tea tea room on 11th February 2016 after trialling our menu at the Grainthorpe Village Hall on weekends over the previous year. In September 2019 we obtained planning permission to convert the upstairs store room into a one bed studio flat. After a whirlwind 2 week semi conversion (building a bathroom from the walls up, and a mattress on the floor) we moved in and made it our home mid September. At the end of 2019 we closed our tea room to complete the flat conversion and refurb the tea room ready to reopen in March 2020. Our opening plans were placed on hold with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Passion for Flavour
We are passionate about food and only serve food that we would be happy to pay for ourselves. We love experimenting with flavour combinations and use local suppliers and food producers where possible. Everything we create is made from scratch where possible using the best ingredients available. That means real butter, organic flour, fresh fruit purees, whole milk, callebaut chocolate, free range eggs, and natural flavourings.
Pete uses his wealth of chef experience to provide a well balanced eatery menu while Michelle has honed her baking skills by baking the cakes, tarts, slices and cookies for the tea room.
Our Suppliers
We work with suppliers that we have come to know well and built a relationship with since starting our adventure in 2016. These include but are not limited to Scaman’s Eggs, J Shaw & Sons Vegetable Merchants, Carron Lodge Cheese Merchants, Capital Dairies, Northern Tea Merchants, Stokes Coffee, Saints & Sinners Preserves, South Lincs Food Service.
You Can Trust Us
Our custom cakes and the items on our eatery menu are all prepared in our kitchen which is inspected by the Environmental Health Department at East Lindsey District Council and we are proud to have been awarded and kept our 5* rating. We are fully insured, have our hygiene certificates, and regularly update our skills in line with changing regulations.