7 May 2010

Neil Sowerby

There’s something comforting about a chef built along substantial lines. Spot a stick insect labouring over a hot stove and you wonder “Is he really tasting what he’s putting out? Does he enjoy food?’’. Michael Weston-Cole’s considerable frame is matched by a similar talent honed working under the likes of Jean Christophe Novelli and City of Manchester Stadium’s John Benson Smith. His own skills have racked up a few awards, including Lancashire chef of the year. Now touching 30, he has a new platform for his skills at Lancashire gastropub The Fenwick, part of his boutique trio of Bowland Village Inns.

This is a chef who conjured up a £21 a head 21-course Cumbrian taster menu when he was cheffing at the Waterhead in Ambleside. It included Cumberland sausage loaf with Lyth Valley damson cheese, crispy wontons with Morecambe Bay shrimps, Mansergh Hall Herdwick tattie pot with warm Cumberland sauce, John Peel Tart and a Westmorland three-decker with sauce Granny Smith.

Before dropping in on the Fenwick we decided to skip breakfast! We were en route for more exalted Lake District dining establishments, so this was just meant as a lunch stop-off a small detour off the M6. As it turned out, it was a highlight of our gourmet jaunt, a comfortable pubby ‘gastropub’ well worth a trip up from Manchester combined with a drive into the fabulous Trough of Bowland. Before Michael took it over, the Fenwick briefly achieved telly notoriety in Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. His rescue plan for the ailing inn was a Campaign for Real Gravy, an initiative the previous incumbents carried off with them to their new haunt in Yorkshire.

Entering the tastefully renovated pub we half expected the residual smell of stockpot bones but instead were met by a pianist tinkling the old ivories – bizarre really for Monday lunchtime. The piano wasn’t a grand. It’s not that kind of place. The cask choice could be more adventurous (Black Sheep is pick of the bunch), the country look of the place a mite more chic but it is a welcome alternative to the occasional gastronomic theme park feel of Nigel Haworth’s Three Fishes and The Highwayman (a rival just up the road).

Like the aforementioned joints, the Fenwick ‘English pub classics’ menu pays substantial homage to local produce. Step forward Winnie Swarbrick for corn-feeding your chickens. The goats cheese was made possible by Carolyn Fairbairn. Cumberland sausage for the scotch egg on the Tasting of Pork platter comes courtesy of one John Stott. The rare breed pork scratchings are made in-house, as is the pub’s exquisite cherry wood hot smoked salmon, served with feather-light blinis (£5.85 and worth every penny).

From nibbles such as ethereal tempura battered king prawns and Kalamata olives and bread with a choice of flavoured butters the quality restaurant-like attention to detail never wavers. Yet starters are between £4 and £6 and no main is above £14 (slowly cooked shank of Lune Valley lamb – exquisite), while most hover around the £10.95 mark with comforting stews, pies, steaks that in the wrong hands could be average fare. They are not.

My confit of pork belly (£10.95) was sensational. Lots of proper crackling, sticky red cabbage, apple mashed potato, some admittedly odd crispy carrots and a reduction featuring Cock Robin cider. Pick of the puddings was a gooey-centric hot chocolate fondant with Kendal mint cake (namechecked producer Romney) ice cream and chocolate paint at £5.95.

The wine list is wide-ranging and affordable, kicking off with Chilean sauvignon and merlot at £3.40 a glass. After the Black Sheep snifter, to accompany my pork belly confit I had a large glass of Aussie Dry River Shiraz (£4.65). As muscular and alcoholic as expected, but a broken foot precluded me driving so no unit angst there.

The Ribble Valley and Bowland are now spectacularly well served by pubs serving good food and Weston-Cole’s Fenwick is up there with the best. Gordon’s gravy gimmick is just a ghost of its past. Pass the fresh jus please.

Fenwick Country Pub and Kitchen
Lancaster Road
Claughton
LA2 9LA
T: 01524 222298
Bowland Village Inns also run the Punch Bowl near Garstang and The Plough at Galgate.
www.bowlandvillageinns.co.uk