Margo’s at The Old Mill

We are quite confident that you have never tasted a pizza like Margo’s pizza.  Don’t take our word for it.  The accolades and the compliments we read are so rewarding for the hard work we put in what we do. Our pizza is used as a point of referral for the definitive Enciclopedia della Pizza, a tome, a reference encyclopaedia for the pizza industry. Ranked as one of the top pizzas in the world.

It is not that we are good at what we do. It is about the provenance of the raw materials, the sourcing of the finest ingredients, not cutting corners, being committed to the traditional values and making everything ourselves.  In a world where everyone tries to prize every penny from you and cheating you in quality and value, we opt to do everything ourselves because at the end of the day if you want something done well, best to do it yourself.

For us it is not just pizza.  It has to be the best pizza.  Otherwise we are wasting our lives.  We use a mother sourdough that has been alive for as long as we remember. Part of your pizza is over 20 years old. We only use amazing, organic flour from Shipton Mills.  We use a blend of ten different flours to create a pizza base that has half the sugars of commercial pizza dough, more than treble the vitamins and no yeast, no chemicals, no additives of any kind. We only use organic buffalo mozzarella hand made for us down in Penzance. All the toppings for our pizza are made in house – from the bacon to the ham, the salami to the crudo – it is all prepared in-house.

We do not serve pub food in the traditional sense of the word. It’s not us. We have baggage. Culinary baggage. There are a million and one other pubs that serve pub food.  We want to serve food that is healthy, fresh, full of flavours, generous in every sense of the word.

You will always find a leg of home-made  Prosciutto Crudo on the bar (yes we cure our own parma ham style ham but we are not allowed to call it parma ham because this is Berkhamsted not Parma).  You will always find freshly baked bread on the bread board, incredible Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) to dip the bread in.  That is a meal in itself.

We were born to feed.  We love cooking; we love eating; we love sharing.  We believe that cooking is a nurturing act, the ultimate gift for our community and friends.  When we prepare a dish, a bit of us goes out from the kitchen with that dish.

Our cuisine is a Mediterranean one.  We serve healthy food; we follow the seasons; we love specials: gazpacho in the summer, ribollita in the autumn. We think of our work in the kitchen as a celebration of nature’s gifts to us.

Food brings us together.  Food completes us.  Food is a celebration of life and no one gets old when celebrating around the dining table.

As a signature style we like to pick meats that are full of flavour and cook them slowly for about 24 hours at low temperature to bring out the flavours without destroying the texture of the meat. Pork cheeks, beef cheeks, pork shank, lamb shank, spare ribs.

Fish, on the other hand, is treated with the utmost respect and cooked gently to keep it moist, firm and just right. Don’t start us on the home-made pasta dishes.

Bread.  More than just carbs. Bread is a sign of life, a living thing, a food that is alive even as it is baked. There is bread and there is bread. When you buy a commercially produced loaf from a supermarket you are investing in so many chemicals that surely it cannot be good for you. Yes, it is soft and light.

We grew up in a little place where life centred around the local baker and their oven.  We lived on bread.  It was our staple food. Traditional round country loaves, crunchy, sour, slightly burnt on the side facing the wood burning.  The ritual and the cycle of the various daily bakes meant that we set our dinner time according to the baker’s timing.

Let us introduce you to our bread.  It has no yeast.  We use sourdough fermentation so our bread never gets mouldy.  We only use organic flours.  No chemicals, no poison, no hidden nasty stuff.  We proof our loaves for more than 48 hours.  Good things take time to make.

We bake our bread in our wood fired pizza oven, just like the good old days. Our bread doesn’t bloat you.  Our bread is full of flavour.

We make bread according to individual specifications: thick crust, thin crust, small, large, round, square.  Not exactly a mass production but when we shape a loaf, we know who it is for and we put love in every one that we produce.

Baguettes, country loaves, challah, bagels, brioche, grissini, crackers, oatcakes, focaccia, rye bread, you name it, we make it.  Is there a bread you cannot find that you want us to make for you?  Let us know and we will.

We cannot use commercially available charcuterie items for a number of reasons.  Primarily, things like ham, pancetta, bacon, prosciutto cotto and other items are so heavily injected with water that once we put them on our pizza, the pizza becomes a pool of chemically laced water.

Chemicals like nitrates and nitrites are carcinogenic.  We do not want to be part of that. So we cure, smoke and age all our own ham, bacon, salami, sausages, pancetta, prosciutto cotto, prosciutto crudo, guanciale, speck, pastrami, collo, and lots more.

You will find that our produce is not bright pink.  If being pink is important to you then you should think again.  It is the chemicals, the nitrates and nitrites, the stuff that gives you cancer, that makes the meats pink.

We not only cure and smoke meat.  We also cure and smoke all sorts of fish: salmon, haddock, mackerel, anchovies (we make our own anchovies – if you love anchovies you have to try ours – plump, fleshy, tasty),  pickle herring and lots more.

We also smoke various sausages we make like Amalfi sausage, Chorizo, Hungarian sausage, Buffalo Salami, Maltese sausage and lots more.

These processes allow us to remove as much water from the natural ingredients as possible so that when we come to use them in our dishes, they are intensely flavoured and perfectly compliment the dish they are used in.

You can use these items at home as part of your dishes from our deli. 

We do not see much point in having a delicatessen that sells items that you can get in any supermarket unless we can offer it at a cheaper price (which we do, like butter, mature cheddar and lots more) or superior quality (which we definitely do).

Originally our delicatessen was set up to showcase our salumeria items – charcuterie made in house by us.  Over a period of time we introduced other items and now we have a reasonable selection of meats as well cheeses, breads, sauces and condiments.

Grana, Pecorino, Taleggio, Fontina, Ricotta, Mature Cheddar, Fior di Capra, Buffalo Mozzarella, Gorgonzola, Gruyere and lots more.  We love our cheeses and we search for the finest and the best.

Most of the items that we sell in the delicatessen are made in house by us.  Following our principles of being organic, wherever possible, sustainable and ethically responsible, we do small runs of products, limited items and prepare items on demand.

Think of us as an extension of your pantry.

We make available anything that we use in our kitchen: our amazing EVOO, our condiments, balsamic reduction, chutneys, pickles, preserves, you name it, we will have it or make it for you.  Even if we do not have it, we will source it, come hell or high water.

Our range of ready made sauces are concentrated and intense.  The idea is to ensure that we pack a lot of flavour in a jar. All you have to do is add a tin of chopped tomatoes to make the sauce go a long way.

Our love and passion for food, for raw materials, for curing, pickling, smoking, ageing gives us the opportunity to share amazing ingredients with our friends and guests.

Ice cream, gelato, gelato, ice cream, what is the difference between the two?  Gelato is the Italian word for ice-cream. But there is more to it than that.  There are three differences between the two.  The first is the overrun.  That is the amount of air worked into the actual ice cream.  Gelato has 20% air added to it while it is being churned whilst ice cream would have anything above 60%.  Some commercial ice creams have 150% air in them.  You are buying more air than ice cream.

Secondly, it is the fat content. Gelato tends to have less fat in it. 4-8% fat is the norm. Ice cream can be up to 20% fat and more.  The worst part of this is the fact that some of that fat added is engineered fat, hydrogenated fat which is not so clever.

Thirdly, gelato is served at a lower temperature than ice cream, for obvious reasons.  Ice cream is served at -20C whilst gelato is served at -13C.  it is easy to serve ice cream at that lower temperature because of the air and fat content in it.  Gelato, on the other hand, has less air and it would be rock hard at such a low temperature.

When we make fruit sorbet we only use fruit and sugar if sugar is necessary.  We do not add water.  We do not add anything else.  When we make ice creams we use milk, eggs, sugar and the flavouring, be it nuts, vanilla, spices.  Our pistacchi ice cream, for example, is nothing more than milk, pistacchi and sugar. Nothing more. Honest, simple and amazing.  Our hazelnut ice cream is made in the same way as our vanilla ice cream: egg yolks, sugar, milk and either vanilla or roasted, crushed hazelnuts.

These days you can get powdered bases and flavourings and pass it as home made ice cream. Not us. Our fruit sorbets are one of your five a day. Our ice creams are pure, honest, simple with no chemicals, additives, colourings, artificial flavourings or preservatives.

Long before you and us were born, the Old Mill existed.  Not so much as a pub as a flour mill.  Eventually it was extended and turned into a hotel and eventually a pub.  When we took over the Old Mill we were in awe of the place and we vowed to make it as beautiful and complete as it deserves to be.

We use the latest technology to dispense our beers and ales. Whether it is Guinness, Cruzcampo, Moretti or Ice Breaker, we have a range of draught beers to suit you.  If you are not keen on alcohol, we cater for you with unalcoholic gins, beers, wines and prosecco.

If it is cocktails you are after we have a resident mixologist who is a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to cocktails.  Fresh ingredients, top branded alcohol and a range of cocktails that will make you want more.

We stock an ever increasing range of single malts as well as gins, rum and tequilas.  Because we come from the Med we have to stock a vast range of digestifs, aperitifs and grappa.  We produce our own limoncello that is not so sweet as the commercially available one.

Yet our piece de resistance is our wine cellar.  Hundreds of wines and a depth of range that is the envy of even the most exclusive restaurants. Part of the range is kept in bonded stores due to the volume of wines we have acquired over the years. From a robust Tignanello to a delicate Barolo, a Cristal or Dom Perignon, a Chateau d’Yquiem to a classic Tokai, we have a collection of mostly Old World wines that will help you make that special moment memorable.

We love our wines. Yet we have to follow our principles and shun new world wines because we cannot afford the food miles and are focused on eliminating our carbon footprint altogether.

If you know of a way how to explain it and justify it to our children, do let us know. 

Coda di topo, pelle di tigre (mouse’s tail and tiger skin).  That is the sign of a great coffee. The coffee should come out of the machine like it is a mouse tail and should have a cream on top like a tiger skin.

Our wake up alarm when we were growing up was the smell of the coffee brewing in the Bialetti.  As we grew older, we upgraded to a bigger Bialetti.  No fancy machines.  Just a top stove coffee maker.

Things have moved on since then and not necessarily for the better.  Some of the coffee around is pretty abysmal.  Those pods. Seriously. 

We like our coffee strong.  We choose our beans, we choose our type of roast and we choose the people who support us in providing the most amazing coffee (and loose leaf teas) in Herts.

Our coffees are all double shotted, unless you ask for a weaker coffee.  Our beans are a blend of mostly Arabica beans and a small percentage of Robusta to add cream and depth of flavour.  They are gently roasted by Smith’s Coffee to our specifications.  It is more of a Northern Italian roast than a Southern Italian one. 

We feel so privileged that we can just make a phone call and ask the roaster to roast coffee for us and get it delivered by the afternoon. Where else?

We can talk coffee until we are blue in the face.

Back home, we visit friends often if they make good coffee; less often if their coffee is not so good; never if they offer the granules stuff.  Life is too short for Nescafe.

The work scene has changed dramatically over the last few years. For better or worse we have more freedom to choose how to work and where to work. At Margo’s at the Old Mill we completely understand how important it is to change your scene from time to time and head somewhere where you can work uninterrupted, in peace and in a comfortable setting.

We have the highest internet speed available, access to printing services, white board, large screens for presentations and a conference room to leave good and lasting impressions on your team.

You just tell us what you need and when you need and we will make sure that everything goes swimmingly.

If you require a specific time and space for hot desking, do let us know in advance.  The fee for hot desking includes coffees and a light lunch.

Whether it is an engagement, a wedding, a christening or a wake, we cater for all sorts of events.  People ask us for packages but we prefer to tailor our services to the specific desires and requests of the people holding the event.  Tell us what you want and we will make it.  Rather than us telling you we believe it should be you telling us.

Margo’s at the Old Mill adapts itself to all sorts of events.  Areas of the place can be reserved exclusively for your event.

The outside will make a wonderful wedding or engagement (weather permitting).  The inside is cosy and comfortable.

The only restriction we have is that we do not allow confetti and fireworks.

We love our pets and we also love to have your pets here with us at Margo’s at the Old Mill. 

Never feel worried that you would not be feel at home just because you have your pet with you o two, or even three.

If your pet is old and needs comfortable soft bedding we have blankets just for them to lie on.  Just ask.

Make sure that you get a bowl of cold water and some treats for your four (or less) legged buddy.  If your pet requires anything while you are here, do let us know.

Don’t mind our cats. they can handle dogs.

No man is an island, entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent,

a part of the main.

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