Our mission is remarkably simple. To tell it how it is!
More than 10,000 diners have sampled the vast new Royal Nawaab restaurant in the ‘Stockport Pyramid’ building on the edge of Manchester, in a two-week soft launch ahead of its formal opening this month. The glass pyramid was the head office of the Co-Op Bank for 23 years until 2018, and has been converted at […]
Northcote, the Lancashire boutique hotel and gastronomic powerhouse that hosts the annual Obsession food festival, has been bought by new owners – who have persuaded executive chef Lisa Goodwin-Allen to return just a month after quitting, to a new role as chef patron-director. The acquisition by Yorkshire-based kitchen entrepreneurs Alf and Clare Ellis ends a period […]
Two prominent female chefs announced their resignations this week – Lisa Goodwin-Allen, executive chef at Northcote in Lancashire, and Sally Abé of the Pem in London. Lisa is stepping down after spending 23 years – more than half her life – at Northcote, the Ribble Valley institution where she has also acted as host chef for Obsession, the […]
Shaun Moffat is to open his debut restaurant as chef patron in Manchester city centre this spring, combining ‘thoughtful British cooking’ and ‘Northern hospitality’ at Winsome, in the glass atrium of the Whitworth Locke Hotel on Princess Street. Shaun (pictured centre) made his name locally at the Edinburgh Castle in Ascots – highly praised for its […]
Two chefs who were part of the opening team at Stockport’s high-flying foodie hotspot Where The Light Gets In eight years ago have teamed up to launch their own restaurant and wine bar, Cantaloupe, in the Cheshire town. Josh Reed-Cooper and Mike Thomas stayed in touch while working their way through some of greater Manchester’s […]
Northern culinary powerhouse Northcote has announced an all-star line-up of visiting chefs for the 25th anniversary edition of Obsession, its annual mid-winter ‘Glastonbury of Gastronomy’ in Lancashire’s Ribble Valley. The festival will host more than 1,700 diners over 17 consecutive nights from 24 January to 9 February next year. The 21 participating chefs with 27 […]
A restaurant offering a ‘fine-dining’ take on classic northern dishes has launched in Rochdale’s newly restored Victorian Gothic town hall. The Martlet Kitchen, named after a mythical bird with no legs, has taken flight under chef Darren Parkinson, formerly of Shibden Mill in Halifax. It is open all day from breakfast, via a straightforward lunch […]
Philosophically inclined chef Sam Buckley is taking his acclaimed Stockport restaurant Where The Light Gets In to Manchester city centre this winter for a five-month series mixing residencies with workshops and talks. Titled ‘A play in the City’, the series is billed as ‘a unique four-act programme that combines food, art, and urban living into […]
Chef Steven Smith, who left the acclaimed Ribble Valley gastropub Freemasons in Wiswell in June, has announced his next move – to head up futuristic Japanese restaurant MUSU in Manchester. Steven transformed Freemasons over 15 years into one of the most commented-on venues in the annual Harden’s survey, which described it this year as ‘a fine-dining […]
Chef-patron Steven Smith has left Freemasons at Wiswell, the fine-dining pub in Lancashire’s Ribble Valley that he has established as a regional star over the past 15 years. Born and raised in nearby Blackburn, Steven plans to open a new venture in the region, although he has no concrete plans as yet. Head chef Matt […]
