expansive as the years go by? The latest Obsession (Friday 24 January to Sunday 9 February 2020) is the 20th and sees 24 chefs with 22 Michelin stars between them host dinners at the Michelin-starred restaurant/luxury hotel in the Ribble Valley.
The booking hotline opens on Sunday, October 13 (call 0333 999 7762), so there’s plenty of time to balance the books to see if you you can afford tickets that start at £150 a head. Mind you that does get you a Louis Roederer Champagne and canapé reception, five-course menu, coffee and petits fours. Paired wine flights can add an extra £50 a head plus you may want to take advantage of the 26-bed four red AA star lodgings on offer.
The line-up, just announced, is as starry as ever, perhaps with a great emphasis on chefs from within the UK and a surprising amount of household names familiar to those who don’t frequent the rarefied higher reaches of fine dining – telly stalwarts Rick Stein (above), James Martin, Brian Turner, Monica Galetti and Ken Hom.
If ToM could run to it we’d aim for Richard Corrigan, Sat Bains, Tom Brown (Cornerstone, Hackney) or Gareth Ward (below), the latter well overdue a second star for his groundbreaking Ynyshir in deepest Powys.
More familiar Michelin luminaries on the 2020 roster include Claude Bosi, Angela Hartnett and Phil Howard. Europe is represented by Jacob Jan Boerma from the three-star Restaurant De Leest in the Netherlands and Dieter Koschina from Algarve two-star Vila Joya, while Noma-trained Prateek Sadhu (Masque) makes the long journey from Mumbai in India.
Nearer to home, Lisa Goodwin-Allen (main image), exec chef at one-starred Northcote itself, kicks off Obsession on Friday, January 24, with founder Nigel Haworth, Northcote Obsession chef ambassador UK, concluding the festival on Sunday, February 9.