Last updated: January 4, 2024
Nestled in the heart of Lancashire’s Ribble Valley, the Michelin-starred Northcote Restaurant has had award-winning chef Lisa Goodwin-Allen leading its kitchen brigade for 20 years.
Northcote Hotel’s elegant fine dining restaurant doesn’t just attract its overnight guests though, rather, diners from up and down the country familiar with the reputation of this fine dining eaterie, come back time and time again to see what Lisa has to offer them.
Our charming evening begins as the taxi pulls off the main road and into Northcote’s carpark – surrounded by perfectly manicured grounds as far as the eye can see and out across Bowland’s unspoilt moors – An Area of Outstanding Beauty.
We’re told to arrive a little before our restaurant booking and for good reason! Northcote’s plush comfortable bar area is the perfect start to our evening – a rum and banana twist on the classic old fashioned goes down an absolute treat as we admire the views and peruse the menu.
The five-course tasting menu with expertly paired wines chosen by the sommelier, changes with the seasons. The spring menu we tried included refreshing delights like celeriac custard with reduced apple gel and fresh apple, served with a homemade crumpet, oozing butter beneath a neat cluster of caviar perched on top and complimented by a 2020 Austrian Gruner Veltliner. Roasted veal sweetbread with tarragon oil and shitake precedes wild turbot charred in pink Himalayan salt with bacon mayo, while the Herdwick mutton comes served with onion and whey puree with caper jam.
It’s a combinaton of extraordinary tastes and textures I’ve never experienced before and Lisa explains where the inspiration comes from: “How we create a menu reflects with the seasons and what the best ingredients are around at the time. Then once we have looked to see what ingredients we have, what kind of protein, which vegetable or fish we want to use, then we start pairing it up with other flavours. Inspiration can come from a lot of places like an ingredient’s origin, nostalgic memories or classic interpretations, which I like to evolve through the food; I make it into a modern version with my stamp on it.”
While we tried the five course Gourment Menu in April, it’s since changed with an offering which includes Yorkshire asparagus, Orkney scallop and roast quail, but Lisa has one stand out favourite: “I like the beef dish, the dairy cow. It’s beef, magnified a million times, the taste is amazing.
“We take a full sirloin, and we use as much of the product as we can. Zero waste is what we emphasise in a lot of our dishes. We wanted to keep it waste free and sustainable, but also pack a lot of flavour into it, so the beef can really hero itself in the dish.
“It’s a barbecued sirloin. Then we take half of the fat, and we make a beef fat hash brown. We tartare the trims from it and put that on top. It’s served with a little garlic ball, which is quite different. There’s garlic in abundance at the minute, but if you imagine eating your Sunday roast, with the cream of the horse radish sauce, that’s where the creamy garlic ball comes into it. It’s quite refined but the flavour of beef is compacted so it’s really flavoursome.”
If you’re a fan of tasting menus, then you’ll recognise the beauty of a well matched wine and Northcote’s sommelier is excellent at it. The aged dairy cow for example, comes with a Pinot Noir from Newton Johnson Family Vineyards on the South African Cape South Coast, championing as many producers as possible through the courses. The food where possible, is selected a little closer to home. Lisa explains: “Obviously, we’re very lucky in that there are some really amazing suppliers in our local area, and the north west as a whole. We try to use them as much as we can. If it’s an ingredient that we can’t source locally, then we will always try to opt for British – some of the best produce in the world can be found here in the British Isles.”
While you will definitely have seen Lisa on TV (she’s a regular on Great British Menu and Jame’s Martin’s Saturday Morning), she’s actually worked at Northcote since she was 23. Being Lancastrian, one of the big draws is that she gets to cook in this gorgeous part of the world, but Lisa also finds Northcote a really special place: “I always want to keep achieving in a place where things keep moving forwards and that’s what makes Northcote so special. It’s iconic. It’s changed so much within the years of it being here, from a small restaurant to a boutique hotel and hopefully now the plans are mortared to take it further forward.”
So with a new restaurant being planned for Northcote, a successful TV career and having even cooked for our King – the then Prince Charles in the past – a time she refers to as surreal cooking with an elite group including Tom Kerridge, Kenny Atkinson and Niall McKenna, Lisa tells us if she could cook for anyone, it would probably be Pink: ‘She’s a rockstar, she’s inspiring.” Sharing her future projects with us, she’ll also soon be cooking a dinner on the iconic Belmond British Pullman which she’s very excited about.
Being an inspiring female in a male dominated industry has clearly never held Lisa back. With a string of accolades to her name, she feels quite honoured to be seen as someone who can use her status to encourage future chefs: “I think it’s important to keep learning, to energise your team. It’s an amazing industry and to have the platform to educate and enthuse others, not just to come into this industry, but also to keep it going, is fantastic.”
The Northcote dining experience is a special one. Friendly, knowledgeable staff, a truly stunning setting (the terrace will be a magical place to eat in summer with that insane backdrop), and dishes you can guarantee you’ll never have tried before. So how does Lisa ensure her guests keep returning? “What you find about Northcote is that when people come here to eat, they feel at home. We make it hospitable; people enjoy coming here. It’s relaxed. Hopefully there’s great food, a nice atmosphere and brilliant service. It’s massively about attention to detail – that’s what we focus on, through and through, and that’s why people like to keep coming back.”
You can view the current Seasonal Gourmet Menu here, priced at £125pp (add the matching wine flight for £72.70pp). The Chef’s Table is available to book for special occasions, while there are also private dining options. Overnight stay packages can be viewed here.
