QUIT moping about not being able to pop around the corner for a handy Michelin in Manchester. Like the tyre giant that sponsors the stellar restaurant awards, you’ve got wheels. Add a SatNav to the equation and a world of fussy, fine dining awaits you within a 90 mile radius of our eternally starless city.
Yesterday at a live London ceremony with all the verve of a Louis van Gaal midfield the Michelin Guide UK handed out the awards for 2017
OK, there’s only one two star among that bunch, but it is L’Enclume in Cartmel, which the Good Food Guide affords a perfect ten score. So why has Simon Rogan’s flagship not been given three stars by Michelin, we ask? And those heartless inspectors have once again snubbed our own Simon Rogan at The French – just don’t get us started.
Yesterday at a live London ceremony with all the verve of a Louis van Gaal midfield the Michelin Guide UK handed out the awards for 2017. The Lakes were the big Northern winners with new stars going to Forest Side at Grasmere and Gilpin at Windermere.
They’ll be booking up fast, as I write, but there are alternatives, most of which Confidential has reviewed.
Take your own pick but I’ve affixed a coveted Sowerby star to the five I favour most.
We’ll work our way from the nearest to Manchester to the furthest away, with round trip distance in miles by road:
Northcote, Langho (70 miles) *
We sent our national critic Charles Campion to lunch at this now rather grand Michelin veteran, run since 1985 by Craig Bancroft and chef Nigel Haworth (joined latterly in the kitchens by fellow Great British Menu star Lisa Allen). Campion reported: “The cooking is precise, the seasoning considered and the presentation elegant. It carries the flag for the small producers of the North West and deserves credit for sticking to the mantra of 'local and seasonal' for three decades.” Good place to stop over, too – it’s the current AA UK hotel of the year. Our review.
Tasting menu £90.
Northcote Road, Langho, Blackburn BB6 8BE. 01254 240555 northcote.com
Fischer’s Baslow Hall, Baslow (80 miles)
Rupert Rowley sounds like a Regency rake (forgive my sudden alliteration), but don’t expect too many culinary dashes to be cut. This is accomplished Michelin-ready cuisine grounded in the products of the Hall’s kitchen garden and over 90 per cent of the produce used is British, mostly from Derbyshire. After training with Blanc, Burton Race and Ramsay, Rowley came ‘home’ fourteen years ago to this solid Edwardian country house that looks much older. Complete the heritage trail with a visit to nearby Chatsworth.
Tasting menu £80.
Calver Road, Baslow, Bakewell, DE45 1RR. 01246 583259 fischers-baslowhall.co.uk
Fraiche, Oxton (80 miles)
The one-man Wirral wonder show shows no sign of flagging. Marc Wilkinson serves a set six-course dinner theatrically to just eight people four nights a week and Sunday lunch to twelve, so it’s obviously a bugger to get a reservation. Gordo squeezed in for us one windy day in February, loving the experience all the way to one of the best cheese trolleys in his experience, but he rhapsodised most about the pecan nut nibbles it all kicked off with: “Baked, one at a time, in Tinkerbelle's oven. She’d spent all afternoon painting them with ambrosia, sprinkling it with the spices she’d stolen from an incense-bearing tree in Kubla Khan’s gardens, close to that sunless sea of his.” Our review.
Tasting menu £85.
11 Rose Mount, Prenton CH43 5SG. 0151 652 2914 restaurantfraiche.com
Simon Radley at The Grosvenor, Chester (80 miles) *
In Chester it's Sticky Walnut which grabs the attention of the Twitterati and the crowdfunders, but this grande dame of hotel restaurants, holding a star for a quarter of a century, sails serenely on, showcasing Radley’s cooking, so accomplished they put his name on the door (there’s also the Arkle Bar, named after the racehorse). Service, bread trolley, wine list are all ‘out of the top drawer’ (sic), but I’m most intrigued by a recent dish called Heritage Carrot Tandoori. They are big on heritage – our reviewer Charles Campion found a Heritage Potato – Loomswood duck ragout, fondant liver and tit bits' “very rich and very satisfying”. Our review.
Tasting menu £99.
Eastgate Street, Chester, CH1 1LT. 01244 324024 chestergrosvenor.com
Man Behind The Curtain, Leeds (90 miles)
A Sunday Times critic (not London-centric AA Gill) was a bit sniffy last weekend about the whole Michael O’Hare experience, citing “his next opening, in Manchester, is backed by famous footballers”, as if that were a war crime, and getting all Erotic Review about the hand-massaged octopus she was served “on a spoon shaped like a sperm and as delicious”. Perhaps the Great British Menu winner inspires such naughtiness. Our own Gordo lusted after the duck liver: “This was a dish by Dolly Parton. Two pink, tiny doughnuts exploded all over the table with emotions least expected; interior velvet subtlety, white chocolate covers topped with pink near-candy top covers, rhinestones of freeze dried berries bringing balanced tart finishes.” No wonder curious folk are booking months ahead for a taste of the Chef formerly know as Hair Metal’s abstract expressionism on a plate approach. Our review.
Tasting menu £75.
Top Floor, Flannels, 68-78 Vicar Lane, Leeds LS1 7JH. 0113 243 2376. http://www.themanbehindthecurtain.co.uk
Box Tree, Ilkley (110 miles) *
This cottage place (chintz, bone china dogs, framed scenes from Shakespeare) looks much as it did in the camp old days when young tyro Marco Pierre White was blooded in its kitchens, but this Yorkshire national treasure maintains its contemporary culinary edge under the stewardship of serial star holder Simon Gueller. This is down to his knack of hiring chef prodigies to cook alongside him. When I last reviewed for ManCon in 2015 Lawrence Yates was cooking; the mantle has passed seamlessly to Mark Owens. Food and service remain immaculate. Our review.
Tasting menu £75.
35-37 Church Street, Ilkley, West Yorks, LS29 9DR. 01943 608484 theboxtree.co.uk
Yorke Arms, Ramsgill (140 miles)
One of only six Michelin-starred female chefs in the UK, Frances Atkins has spent twenty years transforming this 18th century hunting lodge in darkest Nidderdale into the sophisticated Michelin haven it is today. It has held a star continuously since 2003. Big on local produce, the menu can also pack in audacious, global flourishes. Much-travelled before returning to her native Yorkshire, Frances’s most recent challenge is trekking through Ethiopia for Action Against Hunger.
Tasting Menus £50 and £85.
Ramsgill-in-Nidderdale, Pateley Bridge HG3 5RL. 01423 755243 yorke-arms.co.uk
L’Enclume, Cartmel (160 miles) *
Gordo was converted to Simon Rogan’s exquisite cooking on his last visit, attempting to give it 11/10. It inspired him to describe a yoghurt-led dessert as “looking finer than a Matisse. It was so beautiful that 'perfect' doesn't do it justice. It was Bardot walking past Senequier in St. Tropez with flowers in her hair”. As a culinary experience then a notch up on our own lovely French. Our review.
Tasting menu £130.
Cavendish St, Cartmel, Grange-over-Sands LA11 6PZ. 015395 36362 lenclume.co.uk
Gilpin, Windermere (160 miles) *
This Lakes stalwart, which lost its original star in 2008, has forged back under new chef Hrishikesh Desai hired after the luxury hotel took the bold step of featuring in BBC 2‘s Alex Polizzi: Chefs on Trial. Desai, who gained experience with Paul Bocuse, The French Laundry and Lucknam Park has turned things around dramatically.
Tasting menu £85.
Gilpin Hotel & Lake House, Crook Road, Windermere, Cumbria, LA23 3NE. 015394 88818 thegilpin.co.uk
Tyddyn Llan, Llandrillo (160 miles)
A rural boutique restaurant with rooms created in the Eighties by the former set designer for Fawlty Towers, today it is a bastion of classically-treated, proudly Welsh-sourced food cooked by Bryan Webb. His pedigree is immaculate; trained at The Walnut Tree, Abergavenny, succeeding Simon Hopkinson at Hilaire in London. Do the nine courses and crash down overnight. Our review.
Tasting menus £60 and £90.
Llandrillo, Corwen, LL21 0ST. 01490 440264 tyddynllan.co.uk
The Samling, Ambleside (180 miles)
While Holbeck Ghyll and Sharrow Bay have shed their stars, the Samling has kept the Lakes Michelin flag flying high above Lake Windermere. Odd that it doesn’t make it into the rival Waitrose Good Food Guide, while the Nordic-inspired, forage-mad Lake Road Kitchen down in Ambleside does. Our review.
Tasting menu £80.
Ambleside Road, Windermere, LA23 1AR, 015394 31922 thesamlinghotel.co.uk
Forest Side, Grasmere (180 miles)
It can be scant consolation for Simon Rogan – who missed out again for The French at the Midland – that his former head forager and sous chef at L’Enclume, Kevin Tickle (main image), has proved a meteoric success running the kitchens at this glorious Lakes hotel, open just seven months. Mr Tickle’s menus echo his mentor. Our review.
Tasting menu £85.
Keswick Road, Grasmere, Cumbria LA22 9RN. 015394 35250 theforestside.com
Michelin also garlands restaurants with ‘Bib Gourmands’, recognising establishments which provide a “good quality, great value food” offering of three courses for under £28. El Gato Negro in King Street, central Manchester, has just joined the Bib ranks (pictured below).
Further afield in the North West check out Brassica Grill, Heaton Moor (14 miles); The Waggon, Birtle (20 miles); White Swan, Fence (60 miles); Prashad, Drighlington (75 miles); Joseph Benjamin, Chester (80 miles); Twelve, Thornton-Cleveleys (100 miles).
The Great Britain & Ireland Michelin Guide 2017 is published on Thursday, October 6. View the full awards list here.
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