Northcote

Blackburn’s jewel of the North, Northcote, is a Michelin-starred restaurant with a country house hotel and cookery school added on for good measure. Wait, there’s more. A new Victorian-style greenhouse has recently popped up, plus there are plans for a new smaller restaurant on site, more rooms and even a spa. 

However, while Northcote keeps on moving, the staff remain fiercely loyal. Managing director Craig Bancroft arrived in 1983, when there were just four bedrooms, deftly guiding it into a high-end hotspot. “We’re marrying people we christened,” he says.

Meanwhile, chef patron Lisa Goodwin-Allen joined in 2001 and has been here ever since, minus a short-lived step-away last spring. Like a nice Hotel California, no one ever leaves. During our visit, every member of staff we speak to has either been here for years or intends to. It’s that kind of place. 

Our trip coincides with the launch of the new Autumn Gourmet Menu (£155pp), which reaches its crescendo with the fallow deer. Apparently the meat is aged in a Himalayan salt chamber, bringing to mind Bambi happily relaxing in that upcoming spa. It’s lean and slow-cooked, soft to the touch, with an earthiness bolstered by a little Fruit Pastille-shaped chunk of beetroot. 

A full-bodied blackcurrant sauce finishes it off, which becomes even bigger-bodied with a glass of Viña Cobos Bramare Cabernet Sauvignon 2019, Luján de Cuyo. The whole course is a spot on distillation of autumnal dining: woodsy and slightly sweet. 

But the most spectacular new dish has to be the veal sweetbread, from the à la carte menu. Don’t think too much about what a sweetbread actually is (clue: it’s neither sweet nor bread), and just enjoy the ride. It arrives as a small, forbidding hunk of offal, tempered slightly with some lilac-coloured flowers, resting on an onion puree in a Bordelaise sauce three days in the making. It’s a luxurious allium-led base level – by all accounts the onion is Lisa’s favourite vegetable, and, yes, she knows them. 

The sweetbread itself is steamed then roasted, resulting in a buoyant silkiness that matches the dark, rich sauce. At £25 a portion, it’s not cheap, but it’s a miniature masterpiece that shows why Lisa has held that star for years.

The other showpiece new dish is the scallop, and what a scallop it is. Who knew Orkney made them this big? This mollusc is thick, bouncy and topped with a soft layer of calamansi (a citrus fruit midway between lemon and lime) and maple-roasted hazelnuts. It’s a more subtle, subdued dish compared to the other two and might be more for noix fans, but the quality of that scallop impresses either way. 

The breakfast is equally impressive, thanks to a faultless poached egg and a thick, crumbly slab of Lancashire black pudding. Did you expect anything else? The Northcote team are masters of detail. As Craig puts it, “You can’t serve a Michelin-starred dinner and then a knackered poached egg at breakfast.”