You might not immediately think of Lincoln for fine dining. But, nestled in a discreet spot next to a laundrette near the Cathedral Quarter, The Bronze Pig is quietly defying expectations. This intimate restaurant offers a unique choice of taster and à la carte menus, and – with the arrival of head chef Danny Gugliotta – it has evolved into a destination for imaginative, seasonal cuisine that would stand alongside the best in any Michelin city.
When Danny invited me and Lisa to try out his new seven-course tasting menu, it was an opportunity we couldn’t refuse! So, after taking a peek inside the kitchen on a Saturday evening, and also speaking with the restaurant’s owner, Pompeo Siracusa, here we lift the lid on an unexpected gem of fine dining in Lincoln.
Italian roots: the owner and the head chef
Danny Gugliotta’s journey to becoming Head Chef at The Bronze Pig is as unconventional as his menu. No formal culinary qualifications or Michelin-starred training, just a natural flair for cuisine and a relentless drive to create.
“I’ve been in hospitality since I was 18,” he tells us. “The first restaurant I worked in was my dad’s and uncles, but after working front of house at chain restaurants later on, I realised I liked food more than anything else.”
Four years into his professional chef career, Danny has found himself leading the kitchen at The Bronze Pig, bringing a fresh, creative energy that leaps out of every dish.
“I’m obsessed with food, so my day-to-day life consists of me scrolling on every app possible to look up food or watch anything to do with it,” he continues. “I like to go a bit more extravagant, so people can try ingredients and food that they might not try anywhere locally.”
Pompeo Siracusa, the restaurant’s owner, is happy for Danny to have complete freedom with his culinary vision, while he keeps things running smoothly in the background, guiding with his experience and personal touch.
“I had never done this before. I used to work in geophysics,” Pompeo explains. “But I thought I’d change my career, and I opened The Bronze Pig in 2015.”
The name is a story in itself. It nods to Pompeo’s Italian roots, inspired by a life-size bronze boar he saw in a Florence market, and to Lincoln’s own history, echoing a small bronze Roman-era boar in the Museum of Lincolnshire Life. Layered beneath that is a personal reference to a long-standing friendship of Pompeo’s – “a friend who I’ve known for a long time, and she loves anything to do with pigs”.
These three threads – heritage, history, and friendship – come together to make the Bronze Pig.
A seven-course journey beginning with a bite-sized amuse-bouche
Our evening began as Danny invited us into the kitchen to witness the preparation of his latest seven-course tasting menu. People say that fine dining is a form of art, an idea that becomes ever clearer when you see the precision and care that goes into each component of every dish behind the scenes.
Our first dish, a dazzlingly colourful pair of buckwheat tartlets, was designed to whet the appetite: one of purple duck liver parfait with black cherry gel, alongside another of cured trout, compressed cucumber, bright orange roe and sansho pepper.
“I like an amuse-bouche,” says Danny. “When I’ve been out to other Michelin places, I like seeing that they’ve got little snacks before you eat; it’s a nice way to start your meal. So you can get a pop of flavour before you start.”
“I got inspired by a place out in Denmark called Jordnær, where they do lobster with sansho pepper. So I thought, why not try sansho pepper with the trout? I added some yuzu as well, along with kinome leaves, and put it all in a crispy tartlet. Then we serve it with the yuzu cocktail.”
The tartlet–cocktail combo definitely got our evening off to a sparkling start!
Infused with international influences
Our second course – smoked eel, celeriac and chicken velouté with XO sauce – put Danny’s Japanese influences firmly on show. And he prefers to serve the taster menu dishes personally, so he can bring their origin stories to life.
“The XO sauce is a huge umami hit,” he told us. “I went through quite a lengthy process of hydrating, dehydrating and blending 20 different ingredients to make this.”
Mixing eel with celeriac – which Lisa always tells me is an underrated ingredient – turned out to be a great choice.
The following dish was unexpected, intriguing, and popping with flavour: smoked potato, wild garlic and arënkha caviar. Presented as a smooth and smoky mousse, the dish was unlike any we’ve tried before, and it has proved to be a hit. Danny laughed as he recalled: “Some people have even told me it’s their favourite dish of the whole meal.”
Two showstoppers: lobster and roe deer
While every dish was superb, our fourth one – Scottish blue lobster with vadouvan-spiced carrot and bisque – was the real standout for me. Danny gets his lobsters in live and prepares them on the day, and he has curated a dish around it that combines multiple uses of the lobster shells with his specialist finesse for sauces.
“I can’t eat anything without a sauce!” he says. “I just don’t like dry food, so everything has to have a sauce. I build a lot of my food around sauces.”
This is a dish with a meticulous preparation process. “We use the tail of the lobster, we then grill it over the Konro grill, and then put it into lobster butter, which it then poaches very slowly, and this allows the lobster to not seize up.
“We then take it out of the poached butter and give it one more little char over the grill to add more smokiness to it, and then we slice it and serve with a bisque that we create from the lobster shells, and add a vadouvan carrot puree. There are various herbs in there to make it look really vibrant, and then at the table we also dash some lobster oil over it, which we made from the shells.”
Fresh lobster is hard to come by in Lincoln, and this dish is as impressive as you will find anywhere. The creativity, the flavour and the theatre – it’s an all-round spectacular plate.
We moved from surf to turf for the fifth course, which was a roe deer dish with parsnip, beetroot and fig leaf, served with a port and bone marrow jus. This dish was given a distinctive twist thanks to the glaze that Danny used on the deer steaks.
“I saw a dashi vinegar at one of my suppliers, and my friend said, that’d be really nice if you reduced that and turned it into a glaze. And then we did it that night,” Danny explains.
“I reduced it down, added a bit more dashi to it, and some sugar. And then we tried it on some meat, and we thought, that’s great. So I started brushing it onto the venison. It gives it a bit of acidity and tastes a bit sweet, and umami.”
The dish is rounded off with root vegetables and the jus, balancing earthy and sharper notes. It was a joy to see this composition come together in the kitchen, and an even greater one to taste the results.
A tale of two desserts: refined and seasonal
Our final two courses brought the menu to a close with sweetness and indulgence. The sixth dish of brioche, quince, gorgonzola dolce and truffle-infused honey was the perfect segway from savoury to sweet.
As with every course, Danny brought a touch of theatre to the serving, drizzling honey from a dipper over the decadent concoction.
Finally came Danny’s contemporary take on strawberries and cream: strawberry sorbet, strawberries, white chocolate, lemon verbena and a two-day hydrated meringue.
“Lemon verbena is also in season,” says Danny. “It’s quite floral, and I try to add floral flavours to my dishes where I can, because it’s natural and bright, and I wanted to create something a bit more refined.
“So it’s refreshing, it’s light, it’s sweet, it’s citrusy, and it’s all that in one plate – and then you get a bit of crunch.”
Even Lisa, who always orders chocolate desserts and isn’t usually a big fan of meringue, was blown away by this dish – the perfect finale to the perfect show.
The creativity and freedom of the fine dining kitchen
Unlike the frenetic chaos often dramatised in shows like The Bear, there is a sense of order and calm about the kitchen at The Bronze Pig. It’s fast-paced, but also highly measured.
“You need to be prepared,” says Danny. “I stress over preparations. I stress over setting up to make sure it is all fluid motion.
“What I love about being in the kitchen is the creativity, the freedom, and I get to taste lots of amazing food that I wouldn’t usually buy myself at home, because it is quite expensive!”
A constant thread running through the taster menu was the array of bright colours that Danny brings into every dish. And according to him, this is a conscious choice.
“People eat with their eyes before they eat with their mouth,” he says. “When you see something looks nice on the plate, you think it’s going to taste amazing, and then when it does taste amazing, all these fireworks go off in your head.”
It all comes down to the ultimate goal of creating an unforgettable dining experience. “I want people to go away feeling that they’ve tasted food that’s been incredible, that they’ve experienced food that they wouldn’t usually taste around Lincoln,” Danny says.
“That they don’t have to travel miles and miles for somewhere really luxurious. They can just pop to The Bronze Pig.”
A unique brand of fine dining in Lincoln
The Bronze Pig’s taster menus, available on Saturdays in either five or seven courses, sit alongside an à la carte menu served Wednesday to Saturday. This combination in itself makes the restaurant unique in Lincoln, with its Italian roots adding another layer of distinction.
“It’s very much an Italian fine dining restaurant, which is something that nobody else does in Lincoln,” says Pompeo. “If a dish on the à la carte is Italian, then we make sure that it is traditional.
“Lincoln needs more family-run restaurants as opposed to chains,” says Pompeo. “We are a city – albeit very small, but we’re still a city, and we need a few more restaurants that create authentic cuisine.”
For diners looking for a complete weekend experience, The Bronze Pig also has four guest rooms on site.
“They are really lovely bedrooms,” says Pompeo. “And again, they reflect the Italian style. For example, we have bidets in the bathroom. Nobody ever uses them, but we have them! The bathroom floor has underfloor heating, it’s got tiles, so it’s very much an Italian style.”
Where next for The Bronze Pig?
“I am not 20 any more. I just turned 70,” says Pompeo. “So that thought is very much at the forefront of my mind. What is going to happen with The Bronze Pig?”
He is hoping for continuity and care. “I would really hope that Daniel stays and carries on running the kitchen, and hopefully I can get somebody to run the front of house in the same sort of manner, probably even better than I have done.
“But I would hate to think that I put so much effort into this, and 12 years on it’s going to be a chain that comes in. I’ve always been against it.
“So I hope that it carries on, and I’ll still be able to be there in the background to help with the business side of it. I really hope that it doesn’t just go off to the horizon.”
For now, The Bronze Pig isn’t going anywhere. Whether you are celebrating a special occasion, exploring new flavours, or simply seeking a moment of culinary indulgence – there is nowhere in Lincoln quite like it.
To try Danny’s latest taster menu for yourself, you can book a table on the restaurant’s website.
You can read our series of local stories for more glimpses behind the scenes of Lincoln’s hospitality scene.
