Northcote

The formidable double act of Chef-patron Nigel Haworth and wine maestro Craig Bancroft has endured since 1984, establishing their flagship Northcote restaurant as one of the standout stars of the North West's dining scene. Haworth was trumpeting the virtues of fantastic local ingredients long before the bandwagon started rolling, a gospel that he has broadcast far and wide in recent years via the medium of BBC2's Great British Menu. The setting for his consummate culinary endeavours is an imposing red-brick mansion built by a Victorian textile baron, where the designers were recently let loose on the dining room, turning it into a thoroughly sophisticated 21st-century space built to soothe with a soft-focus colour palette, while the same local sourcing ethos is applied to interior design elements - carpets, wallpaper, eye-catching art, hand-made wooden napkin holders - as to the kitchen's raw materials. Look through the bay windows: the larder begins as close to home as the organic kitchen gardens and continues to the pastures of the Ribble Valley hills. With a quartet of high-achieving gastro-pubs to oversee in the area, Haworth takes more of a back seat these days; while staying hands-on enough to make sure the cooking style is how he wants it, the personalities of the individual chefs are encouraged to shine through. Northcote's kitchen is in the eminently capable hands of his head chef and protégée, Lisa Allen, whose intelligent cooking reflects the Lancashire terroir and the intensity of the seasons without affectation. A spread of menus takes in everything from a great value lunch offering (with three choices at each stage) to the full dress tasting and gourmet workouts, including a veggie option, which allow Bancroft's superlative food and wine matching skills to work their magic. Black pudding and buttered pink trout with mustard and nettle sauce is a Lancashire starter through and through, while a main course of corn-fed Goosnargh duck might arrive in the very up-to-date company of liquorice, foie gras, a cherry and peanut sandwich, and chicory. At dessert it's back to red rose country, with vanilla-soaked roast pineapple sharing a plate with Eccles cake ice cream, caramel, and a Valrhona chocolate Eccles cake. The 400-bin wine list is a thing of wonder.