Berkshire


<p>It&#8217;s safe to say excitement reached stratospheric heights when British tapas restaurant and wine bar <a href="https://goatontheroof.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Goat on the Roof</a> swung open its doors in Newbury back in May 2022. The dynamic duo behind it all? Patrick&nbsp;Vaughan-Fowler and head chef Sam May who transformed the old Lloyds Bank building on Bridge Street into a chic eatery that places sustainable, local produce and biodynamic wines front and centre. Trust me, it&#8217;s sublime (just check out my <a href="https://berkshire.muddystilettos.co.uk/eat-out/restaurants/review-goat-on-the-roof-newbury-berkshire/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">review</a>). </p>



<p>So, while continuing to drool over the Pulled 72-Hour Pork Bao Bun that was inhaled months previous, Muddy trotted over to Patrick on a rare moment of downtime for a cheeky chinwag.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="1247" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.02.png" alt="Patrick Vaughan-Fowler Goat on the Roof newbury tapas" class="wp-image-75665" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.02.png 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.02-642x800.png 642w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.02-802x1000.png 802w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.02-321x400.png 321w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.02-768x958.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-so-goat-on-the-roof-what-s-the-ethos-behind-it-all">So, Goat on the Roof &#8211; what&#8217;s the ethos behind it all?</h3>



<p>Basically, behind everything we do is a desire to eat sustainably. When we came up with the idea for this place, we wanted to do it so that it would be a sustainable business model. That means most importantly, the food would be sustainable. So, it would be sustainably produced, sustainably sourced, sustainably supplied. We only use British ingredients. The only things we can&#8217;t source from England are chocolate, citrus, and coffee, but it&#8217;s imported and roasted here and from sustainable producers. We can&#8217;t have a menu without chocolate on &#8211; we&#8217;d be murdered!</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tell-me-a-bit-about-your-background-before-goat-on-the-roof-where-has-the-road-taken-you">Tell me a bit about your background before Goat on the Roof. Where has the road taken you?</h3>



<p>So, I grew up on a farm not a million miles from Newbury and I&#8217;m very lucky that my mum was and continues to be a great cook. I was always taught food came from your surroundings and you ate with the season, and my business partner Sam&#8217;s actually the same and had a very similar upbringing with food. Through Goat on the Roof I really wanted to show how British farmers produce amazing stuff and you can eat really well while having an appealing, diverse restaurant menu using only British ingredients.</p>



<p>After university, I worked in the wine trade for a couple of years and I just realised the more I was selling wine to restaurants, the more I wanted to be part of that world. So, I sold everything, including my beautiful motorbike, and put myself through cookery school to train as a chef. I eventually switched back to wine to work as a sommelier because I wanted to have my own place and then I got a pub just north of Andover. That&#8217;s where Sam came to work for me before we started Goat on the Roof together.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="1250" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.09.40.png" alt="Patrick Vaughan-Fowler Goat on the Roof newbury tapas" class="wp-image-75664" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.09.40.png 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.09.40-640x800.png 640w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.09.40-800x1000.png 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.09.40-320x400.png 320w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.09.40-768x960.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-a-british-tapas-bar">Why a British tapas bar?</h3>



<p>About a year or two before Covid, me and Sam started making plans for what to do next because we were getting a bit bored and wanted to try something else. We always talked about what our favourite style of eating was. I suppose we&#8217;re both fundamentally greedy as we wanted to eat in a way where you could try all sorts of different flavours, so we thought a family sharing style restaurant would be what we wanted to do. We didn&#8217;t even hesitate that it was going to be British because we wanted to support local producers.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ve lived in Newbury for 9 years now and for a lot of that I&#8217;ve just been working in the pub so on a rare night off I&#8217;d come into Newbury and think, &#8216;right, let&#8217;s see what going on,&#8217; and it&#8217;s just all the chains. It&#8217;s very unexciting. There was just nothing really inspiring. There was Henry and Joe&#8217;s which was really good food, but they closed just before we opened. I just always thought we needed a bit more selection and choice. So yeah, we did it here and touch wood it&#8217;s been really well received.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-of-course-we-have-to-talk-about-the-name-where-did-it-come-from">Of course, we have to talk about the name &#8211; where did it come from?</h3>



<p>There are a couple of really cool, old school traditional tapas places in Madrid that I really love. One is called The Cat in the Shadows, in Spanish obviously, and one&#8217;s called The Duck on the Corner, and I was kind of thinking of something along those lines &#8211; something a bit quirky and different like that but with a British take. So I was in Portugal, in the heart of the port country, and I was doing a tasting. Very, very weirdly they didn&#8217;t put out any spittoons and as soon as they realised we were in the trade, they were sort of like, &#8216;oh, right, you&#8217;ve got to try this&#8217; and &#8216;oh, hang on, that&#8217;s open&#8217;, so things got a little bit, fuzzy, shall we say. </p>



<p>Afterwards they said, &#8216;let&#8217;s drive you out into the vine and you can come and see our prized vineyard.&#8217; So, we were driving up the rickety track to it and there was a shed on the side of the vines where they keep the equipment for the vineyard workers and there were these two goats climbing over the roof. Or at least I think there were. I mean, there had been a lot of port at that point so maybe it was a figment of my imagination. But I thought, &#8216;oh that&#8217;s a good idea, that could work.&#8217; I&#8217;ve always loved it &#8211; it&#8217;s a silly but fun name and we get told people don&#8217;t forget it which is great.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="1250" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.08.53.png" alt="Patrick Vaughan-Fowler Goat on the Roof newbury tapas" class="wp-image-75663" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.08.53.png 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.08.53-640x800.png 640w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.08.53-800x1000.png 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.08.53-320x400.png 320w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.08.53-768x960.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-foraging-is-a-big-part-of-what-you-do-at-goat-on-the-roof-tell-me-more">Foraging is a big part of what you do at Goat on the Roof. Tell me more!</h3>



<p>It was kind of logical with the way we source our food that foraging should be something we&#8217;re doing. We&#8217;ve been learning for years now and really enjoy going out and getting to better grips with all the seasons. We&#8217;ve got so many spots because it all changes every year. We&#8217;ve been working with this sort of wizard called Mark who has taught us for years and he&#8217;s taken us out in different seasons and taught us what&#8217;s good and what&#8217;s not. A lot of it is learning what&#8217;s not safe, and obviously we can&#8217;t afford to have any risks with our guests, so we have to be very careful about that.</p>



<p>Over time we&#8217;ve learned loads. In certain seasons, you can get a lot of things like winter chanterelles or St. George&#8217;s mushrooms. If you get lucky on those, you can find heaps of them. Mushrooms are probably the most rewarding but that being said, we get lots of wild herbs as well that we put in everything. We put those in our cocktails, through dressings and make vinegars with them. It&#8217;s quite a good range of stuff really, that&#8217;s why we have so many pickles and ferments in our stores. If we find these things, and you can preserve them, it means you can use them in the winter months when less is being grown here. It just livens up the menu to make it a bit more interesting.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-do-you-create-dishes-based-on-what-you-forage">Do you create dishes based on what you forage?</h3>



<p>Definitely. I mean, if it&#8217;s some sort of special mushroom, we can pick them in the morning and then they&#8217;ll be on the menu by lunchtime which is great. I mean, you can&#8217;t get fresher than that. There&#8217;s something really special about hunting your own food as well. A group of us will go out into the woods with our baskets. It&#8217;s really, really cool. I think more people should know how to supplement their food that way. It&#8217;s also so healthy because in a woodland area no one&#8217;s going through spraying with chemicals. It&#8217;s all organic so totally healthy eating and the very pinnacle of local, beautiful food really.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-do-you-have-a-favourite-chef">Do you have a favourite chef?</h3>



<p>I&#8217;d have to say Sam. He and I have worked together for a long time now and he&#8217;s a weird and wonderful dude but has got an encyclopedic knowledge of ingredients and he loves all of them. I can go out foraging and find something weird and bring it in and he gets so excited and then starts coming up with all sorts of different ways it can be used. I think it&#8217;s awesome.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-favourite-dish-on-the-menu">Favourite dish on the menu?</h3>



<p> I mean, I eat so many of them that I&#8217;m probably about 75 percent crispbread at this moment. I love the wild mushroom and chicken crispbread. Otherwise, we&#8217;ve got a really, really nice line caught, day boat sea bass crudo with a smoked mayonnaise. That&#8217;s really clean, fresh flavours.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="1248" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.31.png" alt="Patrick Vaughan-Fowler Goat on the Roof newbury tapas" class="wp-image-75670" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.31.png 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.31-641x800.png 641w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.31-801x1000.png 801w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.31-321x400.png 321w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.11.31-768x958.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-favourite-wine">Favourite wine?</h3>



<p> Oh god, that&#8217;s really difficult. That&#8217;s like asking me to choose my favourite child. I don&#8217;t have children; I just have the wine. Well, we&#8217;ve recently put up some shelving as a wine shop display in the wine bar. We&#8217;ve always sold our wines to take away because we get such unique and cool wines that you can&#8217;t really find anywhere else, and we want to show people them. It&#8217;s great now because you can go in there and see all the different bottles we have, and we&#8217;re always on hand to advise. </p>



<p>But yeah, I mean, I was lucky a supplier took me to Rioja recently. I think that&#8217;s a region people think they know because it&#8217;s such a well-established wine region, but it&#8217;s so different now. There&#8217;s so many really, really cool examples of it being made so we&#8217;ve got some from there that are made by real rock stars of the new school of Rioja, so I&#8217;d probably say something from one of them at the moment would be my favourite. That&#8217;s what I seem to be tasting a lot of.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-you-take-your-wine-very-seriously-how-do-you-decide-what-qualifies-for-the-menu">You take your wine very seriously. How do you decide what qualifies for the menu?</h3>



<p> Basically, we made a sort of unofficial rule when we started that we would only go for wine from not too far away. You know, we can&#8217;t be only using locally sourced food but shipping wines from the other side of the world. We always said we would only get them from Europe, in inverted commas, or sort of wider Europe. I think our furthest away at the moment is a couple of Georgian wines. Otherwise, the only thing we look for is that they&#8217;re sustainably produced. So usually that means they are either organic, in a lot of cases they&#8217;re biodynamic, or if they&#8217;re not certified, they&#8217;re working that way.</p>



<p>In order to find that out, we get to know our producers quite well because we need to know they&#8217;re not spraying chemicals and running a very environmentally friendly setup. We do the same with our food, so we do the same with our wine. It has to be really good quality and good value for money as well. I&#8217;ve worked in many different restaurants with different levels of quality, and I&#8217;ve seen in the past there&#8217;s a very old fashioned attitude that restaurants make their money on wine. Sammy and I&#8217;ve never believed in that. I&#8217;d much rather have a wine list that people are ordering all sorts of different wines from to show them different, cool things instead of having bottles sitting there gathering dust.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="1237" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.07.00.png" alt="Patrick Vaughan-Fowler Goat on the Roof newbury tapas" class="wp-image-75661" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.07.00.png 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.07.00-647x800.png 647w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.07.00-808x1000.png 808w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.07.00-323x400.png 323w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/berkshire/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/02/goat-on-the-roof-Screenshot-2025-02-05-at-17.07.00-768x950.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-have-been-the-highlights-since-opening-goat-on-the-roof">What have been the highlights since opening Goat on the Roof?</h3>



<p>It&#8217;s been an incredible year, actually. We&#8217;ve had the Jay Rayner interview in The Guardian which was unbelievably good. Then we were included in the Michelin Guide. But actually, the thing we&#8217;re probably most proud of is we got our three star award in the Sustainable Restaurant Association. It&#8217;s just been epic and so busy and just sort of continues to be, so which is all you ever want when you start a restaurant, really. When I kind of stop and look around this busy, buzzy restaurant where people are all enjoying themselves it&#8217;s just an amazing feeling.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-next-for-you">What&#8217;s next for you?</h3>



<p> Well, Goat on the Roof will remain the same and we&#8217;re going to just keep working at it and make it as good as we can. We&#8217;re never kind of resting on our laurels. I think that&#8217;s how a restaurant dies. But we&#8217;re definitely thinking of opening another one. It&#8217;s a different concept though because I think Newbury&#8217;s a really cool market and it needs more brilliant, independent businesses. I certainly would like to see more options for people here, and if you don&#8217;t live in Newbury, there&#8217;s more reason to come in. So, we&#8217;re going to stay inside Newbury and we&#8217;re going to keep opening stuff.</p>



<p><strong><em><a href="https://goatontheroof.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Goat on the Roof</a>, 1 Bridge St, Newbury RG14 5BE. Telephone: 01635 580015.</em></strong></p>


Muddy meets: Patrick Vaughan-Fowler of Goat on the Roof

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