It’s been named the Best Restaurant in Britain – and the third best in the world – so naturally my expectations are high when I arrive at Northcote, a one-Michelin-star eatery that happens to be located in Lancashire on the threshold of one of Britain’s most beautiful regions, the Forest of Bowland National Landscape.
This area alone, I discover, makes the journey from London worthwhile.
Northcote itself? If you’re a foodie, it’s worth a journey from anywhere in the land. For this restaurant, even in the world of Michelin-starred eateries, is special.
Journalists tend to hesitate when using the word ‘genius’ in reviews – it’s an absolute that suggests an experience can’t be improved.
But there are a few mouthfuls of food delivered by Executive Chef Lisa Goodwin-Allen that potentially warrant deployment of this powerful adjective.
MailOnline Travel Editor Ted Thornhill visits Northcote, crowned ‘Britain’s best restaurant’ in Tripadvisor’s 2024 Travellers’ Choice awards
Northcote, a one-Michelin-star eatery, is located in Lancashire on the threshold of ‘one of Britain’s most beautiful regions’, the Forest of Bowland National Landscape
And I’m certainly not the first Northcote diner moved to distribute extravagant summations of the cooking.
Set in a redbrick manor house, Northcote is a restaurant and a hotel – they share the name – but it’s the former that soaks up most of the limelight. This year it was named the No.1 eatery in Britain and third best on the planet by Tripadvisor’s 2024 Travellers’ Choice Best of the Best Restaurants awards, determined by the ‘quality and quantity of traveller reviews and ratings posted on Tripadvisor over a 12-month period’.
Northcote has, at the time of writing, 2,256 reviews, with 1,720 of those (or 76 per cent) a five-star rating. Recent reviewer ‘DobbieRuncorn’ contributed to this tally with a write-up headlined ‘perfection on all levels’.
I put the restaurant’s a la carte and tasting menu through its paces across two evenings during a weekend stay at the property with my partner and seven-year-old daughter and end up aligning myself with DobbieRuncorn on the verdict front.
Service is charming and sparky from the get-go – and never dims. The waiting staff, who all seem as excited to be working at Northcote as the guests are to be eating there, could be lifted out and parachuted into any restaurant or hotel on the planet – and they’d shine.
Everyone knows their job, knows the food and knows the wine list. They make hospitality look easy (and it really isn’t – I got flustered waiting tables in a Harvester).
The dishes, meanwhile, are crafted by a genuine superstar in the British food industry, whose cooking is confident, comforting and clever.
Lisa weaves flavours and textures together like an expert seamstress.
THE A LA CARTE EXPERIENCE
Set in a redbrick manor house, Northcote is a restaurant and a hotel – they share the name – but it’s the former that soaks up most of the limelight, notes Ted. Above is the dining room
Proceedings begin as all premium restaurant meals should – in the bar.
Here, one ensconces oneself on plump furniture for preprandial tissue-liveners.
It’s a most pleasant citrusy Louis Roederer Collection 244 Champagne for me on both evenings, the first of which is the a la carte experience.
For this, the staff take our order after distributing the aperitifs – a deft move that speeds up the service – thoughtfully explaining that we might like to avoid the dishes that overlap with the tasting menu.
The dining room, refreshingly for a Michelin-star restaurant, buzzes with lively conversation and banter – I suspect most guests are celebrating something – and is bedecked with luxury cream-coloured chairs and thick grey curtains. Upscale and elegant, if a little forgettable.
The food will live long in the memory, though.
Ted’s a la carte ‘snacks’ – the dish on the right is a deconstructed quiche served inside an eggshell
The a la carte chalk stream trout gravlax and caviar that’s finished with frozen dill ‘snow’
A la carte Lake District Lamb (£40.50), three cuboids – including a slow-cooked lamb belly – of ‘melt-in-the-mouth meat magic’
Lisa more or less seals the rave-review deal with the amuse-bouche snacks alone (served with the a la carte and tasting menus).
I particularly love the cute deconstructed quiche served inside an eggshell formed from Lancashire cheese custard, caramelised onion jelly and onion foam. Delightful and delectable.
Which is also an adjective pairing I can apply with equal confidence to the a la carte chalk stream trout gravlax and caviar that’s finished with frozen dill ‘snow’ (£17) and a preserved elderflower sauce.
The English Raspberry dessert denouement (above) is ‘exquisite’, remarks Ted
For my a la carte main it’s Lake District Lamb (£40.50), three cuboids – including a slow-cooked lamb belly – of melt-in-the-mouth meat magic served with sheep’s curd and pureed carrot I could eat out of a cone.
The English Raspberry dessert denouement (£19.50) is exquisite – meringue wafers ornamentally fanned around a mousse of hung yoghurt, yuzu, raspberry glaze, caramelised cream and white chocolate.
The scene is completed by little balls of raspberry ‘snow’.
Is there wine to go with all this? You betcha. I follow the menu-pairing recommendations inked in by head sommelier Magda Sleziak, which means more Louis Roederer Collection 244 Champagne – for the trout – a plummy Marques de Murrieta Rioja (£8.60/70ml, £14.40/125ml and £80/bottle) for the lamb, and dancing on the taste buds with the dessert is a Piemontese Alasia Brachetto D’Acqui red that’s lightly fizzy and gloriously fruity (£4.80/70ml, £8/125ml, £11.50/175ml and £42/bottle). Go for the 175ml option – it’s only 5.5 per cent alcohol.
THE TASTING MENU EXPERIENCE
Evening number two arrives and it’s time for the main event – Lisa’s £135 five-course ‘Gourmet’ tasting menu.
First up, it’s ‘Forest Mushroom Parfait’, which sets the taste-sensation bar stratospherically high. This creation is presented as a gateau, with creamy mushroom fillings layered with hints of balsamic vinegar – and topped with thin mushroom wafers. To accompany, an intensely delicious cup of mushroom ‘tea’ and tarragon flaky bread to scoop up the parfait with.
‘Forest Mushroom Parfait’, which ‘sets the taste-sensation bar stratospherically high’
![Squab pigeon - 'a much-maligned animal, but [at Northcote] it's exulted to food fit for royalty'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/04/15/92753053-14149567-image-m-42_1733327795874.jpg)
Squab pigeon – ‘a much-maligned animal, but [at Northcote] it’s exulted to food fit for royalty’
Next, tenderly cooked squab pigeon. A much-maligned animal, but here it’s exulted to food fit for royalty, coated in a sweet and savoury maltose glaze and paired with a rich sauce made from the pigeon bones and red wine.
Cod is course number three, and once more something ordinary is elevated to a divine flavour experience. For this we can thank the bed of smoky taramasalata and beurre blanc the North Sea fish nestles in and the zesty citrus jelly garland.
A symphony of autumnal tastes and textures arrives next that we struggle to resist devouring at a presto tempo – beautifully cooked salt-chamber-aged Scottish venison with grace notes aplenty, including a pillow of pasta filled with a flavourful faggot mix, a tangy roll of beetroot and a creamy butternut squash puree.
A winner – but get your Instagram shot of the artful presentation nailed before the puddle of (albeit tasty) venison jus is poured.
The ‘coffee’ dessert is another course-cum-photo-shoot opportunity. It’s a beaut. A decorative ensemble featuring a ‘collar’ of Valrhona chocolate in which sits ‘leaves’, biscuits and blobs of chocolate mousse; coffee and amaretto ice cream; and coffee syrup.
North Sea Cod – which nestles in a bed of smoky taramasalata and beurre blanc and wears a zesty citrus jelly garland
Salt-chamber-aged Scottish venison, ‘served with a pillow of pasta filled with a flavourful faggot mix, a tangy roll of beetroot and a creamy butternut squash puree’
The ‘coffee’ dessert – ‘a course-cum-photo-shoot opportunity’
Corking: The tasting menu wine flight that Ted enjoys
Wine-wise, our excellent pairing flight (£98.50) whisks us to New Zealand (a pinot gris reserve by Lawson’s Dry Hills for the snacks); Portugal (a white Évora Vinho de Talha for the mushroom parfait); Italy (a pinot grigio by the Specogna winery for the pigeon); South Africa (a lovely Tokara Director’s Reserve white for the cod); and California (a scrumptious red Zinfandel by the Seghesio family for the venison).
For dessert, it’s a moreish fruity liqueur by Henri Giraud from the Champagne region.
The meal draws to a close and I take stock. The consistency from Lisa and her brigade is remarkable. Which dishes are genius? Arguably the mushroom parfait, trout, cod and coffee dessert, which could double as an art contest submission. But could the leftover chips we had from our daughter’s chicken and chips be No.1?
My partner declares them the best chips she’s ever eaten and I see her point of view – they’re pillowy soft on the inside, crispy on the outside. Dreamy.
Northcote Executive Chef Lisa Goodwin-Allen
Northcote’s triple-cooked chips, which Ted describes as ‘dreamy’
What’s the secret? Lisa is kind enough to divulge some of the steps she takes to make them when I chat with her about her remarkable success.
The first step? A decent spud.
Lisa said: ‘We get the right potato for a start.
‘You need a chipping potato [Maris Piper and King Edward potatoes, for example] and then we cook them in salted water and then fluff them like a roast potato.
‘That involves putting them in a pan or colander and shaking them so they go fluffy on the outside.
‘And then we freeze them – and we cook them from frozen.
‘And what happens is the inside goes really fluffy, because it kind of breaks down, and when we fry them the outside goes really crispy.’
THE HOTEL
Ted stays in a junior suite (above), which he says is ‘spacious’ with an ‘epic’ bed
The classy Northcote full English
Tempted to book a meal at Northcote? I’d recommend tying the experience with a bow and staying in the 26-room hotel – it’s gorgeously appointed.
We stay in a spacious junior suite with an epic bed, an elegant ensuite with a heated floor and walk-in shower behind a partition wall you can access from two sides – and a balcony offering views out over the Forest of Bowland greenery.
THE SURROUNDINGS
We explore the surrounds following plaudit-worthy Northcote breakfasts, enjoying a mesmerising tour of nearby Grade I-listed Browsholme Hall with the owner, Robert Parker, who explains that the magnificent property has been in his family since the 16th century; a saunter around the fun Wild Boar Park, near the village of Chipping; a peek inside the brilliant Clitheroe Castle Museum; and a splendid few hours with Katie Wilson, who picks us up at Northcote and takes us on one of her ‘Bowland & Bay’ foodie tours, which highlights the endeavours of local artisanal producers and includes a stop at a superb ‘cow to cone’ ice-cream shop in Clitheroe.
We board our London-bound Avanti Pendolino at nearby Preston enlightened of mind, heavier of stomach (in the best possible way) – and with a determination to return to Northcote.
Britain’s best restaurant? It’s certainly one of the finest I’ve ever been to, anywhere – and is deservedly worthy of flying the flag for British cooking.
TRAVEL FACTS
Ted and his family were hosted by Northcote, where rooms cost from £204.
The tasting menu costs £135. Wine flight – £98.50. Connoisseur flight – £183. A la carte courses from £17.
Visit www.northcote.com.
For more on Obsession, ‘Northcote’s annual homage to the finest food and wine’, a gastronomic event with guest chefs travelling in from all over the world to cook in Lisa’s kitchen, visit www.northcoteobsession.com.
The verdict – ratings
Pros: Excellent food, and the dishes could double as submissions for an art contest; high-quality wines; top-tier service; superb hotel; great location. A set-up that lives up to the hype – a gourmand’s paradise.
Cons: You’d have to be extremely fussy to find fault here.
Rating for restaurant out of five: *****
Rating for hotel out of five: 4.5
Getting there
The nearest mainline station to Northcote is Preston. Ted travelled there from London Euston using Avanti West Coast’s 125mph Pendolino tilting trains.
Visit www.avantiwestcoast.co.uk.
