Pentonbridge Inn

True, true, Pentonbridge Inn pushes our remit of “Manchester and the North” to the max, to the point where the restaurant window looks out onto a whole different country (hello Scotland). That said, it’s only a couple of hours’ drive from Manchester. If you’re on a lifelong mission to taste the terroir of the North, then you need to move beyond our dusty old city, and Carlisle is as good a place as any. 

Pentonbridge Inn has a wealth of credentials: rave reviews from the best in the biz, a Michelin star since 2023, and a tasting menu courtesy of one of the UK’s most singular chefs, Chris Archer. It’s an eight-course menu, £130 per head, with a £75 signature wine flight, or a prestige wine flight at £125 for all you serious imbibers. 

After stints at highly respected restaurants such as The Cottage In The Wood and Yorke Arms, Chris took over the Pentonbridge Inn kitchen in 2019, where his ideas have been given free rein. A substantial amount of the restaurant’s non-meat and fish produce are grown at Netherby Hall’s spectacular walled garden, a mile or two down the road. Indeed, for this meal, practically everything was grown there.

Chris is a refreshingly forthright chef: no-nonsense and candid, with zero time for hogwash (unless hogwash is some new porcine sauce he’s working on, which is a real possibility). 

He’s all about the craft and science of cooking, creating extraordinary region-defining dishes, without any performative narrative. No tearjerking stories of a dead dog who fell down a well but brought the local village together, not on his menu. 

Instead, you get it straight: “Garden Peas and Onion”. Sounds simple. It’s actually an elaborate two-part construction: first, a crisp croustade, containing crab, onion and avocado, paired with a layered pot of pea foam and onion custard, set in the oven by steaming.  

Dig in with a spoon, and you’ll find a stash of secret teeny-tiny peas at the bottom. Only the most minute peas are picked, over two and a half months, frozen until there are enough to run the dish, then it comes off the menu. When they’re gone, it’s done. 

The result is a dish that overdelivers massively, as does the entire menu. The absence of storytelling gives agency back to the diner – you react to each course on its own terms, no hand-holding. It takes a confident chef to pull off a menu this uncompromising. 

Sommelier Robert Patla keeps things chugging along nicely. He’s on the right side of eccentric, dishing up big, bold pairings and decrying anyone who dislikes Riesling as an imposter. Precisely the kind of character to assist such a rule-bending tasting menu. 

Any normal meal, the North Sea Halibut would be the standout dish. Gentle, flaky fish with a thin potato-bread crust that shatters and cracks, plus a chubby langoustine and salt-baked celeriac, unified with a lightly tart cider sauce. It hits all the senses – aural, visual and, of course, taste. 

But then the St Bride duck turns up. Vegans turn away now. It’s essentially the richest, bloodiest meal ever made, where even the wine, cep mushroom, cherry and pistachio boudin and beetroot somehow pass for haemoglobin. And that’s a positive. It’s a celebration of caveman dining, powerful and almost taboo. 

It’s so well put together you’d assume it was one of Chris Archer’s showpiece dishes, but it turns out it only went on the menu the week before our visit, albeit after a near-obsessive search for the UK’s best-tasting duck. 

The restaurant space itself is cosy and intimate, but get a table with a view of the kitchen at work, if you can. The team at work are relaxed yet meticulous, matching the meal beat for beat. Speaking of which, the soundtrack is pleasant fare, if a little unremarkable. Think Fleetwood Mac and Carly Simon, the accessible side of fine-dining background music, all at a reasonable volume. (Although it does veer into Dixie Chicks and Robbie Williams territory towards the end of the evening, which feels like a cue to leave.)

The only real criticism is that it’s very out of the way. If you’re coming round these parts, you’re coming for a meal or a walk, as there’s not much else to do. But with a meal this memorable, you won’t need anything else. This is destination dining at its most distinctive – well worth the distance.