Through my life in restaurants I’ve met many wonderful people, and one such individual is Robbie Bargh, the founder of Gorgeous Group hospitality consultancy. Despite a globe-spanning client list he remains a proud Mancunian, and he and I are currently working together on a major food and drink project at Haigh Hall in Wigan. He is also the man who told me one of the wisest adages in hospitality – “It’s all about emotions per square foot.”
What he meant is that once you get a guest through your door – no mean feat in itself – you cannot waste any opportunity to engender feelings of joy. From the design of your front desk to the greeting from your team, from the pragmatism of agreeable acoustics, lighting and temperature to the tactile paper stock of your beautifully laid out menus. Every last element should work hard to elevate the experience and delight the diner.
I’ve often thought how this also applies in microcosm to the food on the plate, where there is even less real estate to deliver what should be the visceral heartbeat of any dining journey. That porcelain circle (spare me squares, planks and slates, please) is as tight and unforgiving an arena as a sumo’s dohyō; there is simply no room for a pedestrian slab of protein or an insipid sauce, or worse still that nagging feeling that something magical is missing.
How timely then that this concept, of food as intensely perfect as a Willard Wigan sculpture, played out beautifully during a recent family lunch at The Pack Horse in the bucolic setting of Hayfield. It’s a pub I have long championed, based on nothing more than admiration for its owners, Luke and Emma, and gratitude that they choose to open such a fine establishment (almost) on my doorstep. Critics and guides have flocked to their doors, and I even wrote the foreword for their cookbook.
Out front, Gusbourne umbrellas shield a pretty little cobbled seating area. Inside, there is a proper fire, local artworks, and a blackboard listing favoured suppliers. There is also a black labrador sat hopefully beneath a jar of dog biscuits, entirely unaware of the accompanying sign warning said dog has probably already had enough dog biscuits. With handpulls on the bar from Northern breweries including Osset and Acorn, my emotions were already stirred to a gentle simmer.
First off the menu was a snack of whitebait, a pub classic which surely can’t be improved upon? The fish were thumb-sized and plump, crisp as a New York pizza base and delicately pebble-dashed with an audibly crunchy salt and pepper crust. But as we all know salty-crispy things are made to be dipped in creamy sauces, and oily fish respond well to a punch of spice, so here you get to dredge them through a homemade gochujang mayo.
In gastronomic terms this is like suddenly discovering your house has an extra floor, or you yourself have an additional erogenous zone. Why weren’t we told? Why doesn’t everybody do this?!
My starter was a flamed mackerel fillet, a dish which has become a modern classic by virtue of taking a cheap ingredient with bags of flavour and making it sing through robust cooking and a tart sauce for balance. In this instance the skin had a run of meticulous slashes a mere matchstick-width apart, creating textural toeholds for the scorching to loosen the fish’s intense flavours. It suggested a chef with a keen-edged Japanese knife, a geometry set and possibly mild OCD.
Alongside it, zingy seasonal gooseberries were diced into a fine salsa with cucumber and elderflower vinegar and topped with threads of dill. Beneath it was not just any old sauce but ranch sauce, in fact the ranch sauce of dreams, loose and tangy with buttermilk and shot through with a chiffonade of green herbs and a slug of fermented pickle juice. Again, this is a fine dish, long proven, then improved further, with every single element adding to the whole.
It was a Sunday, so despite others around the table choosing mains of mint and honey braised Peak District lamb shoulder, or tenderstem, walnut and Cote Hill blue tart, I adopted an orthodox stance and ordered the roast beef sirloin, sourced from Mettrick’s butchers just over the hill. The thick folds of well rested beef, blackened at the edges but the colour of claret within, came with a proper gravy, thickened from the pan juices, and a top-notch selection of trimmings.
There were greens, but not farty, bitter, school dinner cabbage. Here it was hispi, finely shredded and lightly cooked to retain delicate crunch. A large carrot was roasted to a fudgey sweetness, and a dreamy mash was made from carrot and suede, so rich and creamy I’d eat it piped into profiteroles. Towering Yorkshires, the deep brown hue of an aristocrat’s inherited furniture, had a brittle sheen on top with just the slightest squidginess at the bottom where that gravy had gained a purchase.
If I were being picky – which is rather required by my hypothesis of meticulous perfection – the roasties were not quite in line with my personal proclivities. They were well browned and fluffy within but had a smooth carapace, whilst I like my spud’s edges roughed up a little to create a filigree of lacey burnt bits.
And then dessert, so often a weakness in kitchens lacking a pastry specialist but here the intent was clearly to finish on a high. French stars of pistachio crème pâtissière had been piped on to a plump cushion of choux, with strawberry slices fanned around the circumference like fallen dominos. With a pleasing contrast they were sweet and red on one half, tart and green the other, dotted with micro basil leaves and candied pistachios. A textbook quenelle of homemade crème fraîche sorbet, sweet and sharp, was elegantly plopped in the middle.
Whilst undeniably refined, this is all recognisably pub cooking, generous and honest and respectful of traditions, and the techniques on the plate are there for the diner’s benefit rather than the kitchen’s ego. It’s a rare thing indeed to enjoy a succession of multi-faceted dishes where every last element has such a clear and perfectly fulfilled purpose.
And to top it all they’ve just started serving weekend breakfasts too – maybe they’ll finally settle the argument of what does and doesn’t belong in a Great British fry-up, or how crispy the bacon should be?
We left The Pack Horse deeply satisfied and emotionally spent, but I suppose a counterbalance to ‘Robbie’s law’ could be the words of Coco Chanel, who famously said that before leaving the house you should look in the mirror and take one accessory off. Personally, I side with my fellow Manc, as with cooking as accomplished as Luke’s too much is never enough.
Thom Hetherington dined at The Pack Horse, 3-5 Market Street, Hayfield, Derbyshire. SK22 2EP
Petit Fours
- The Eastern borough of Tameside has long felt like the poor relation on the Mancunian gourmet compass, with few of the foodie neighbourhood clusters you find North, South and West of the city centre. Ornella’s Kitchen and Lily’s were isolated stand outs, but is the combination of affordable property, short commutes and proximity to glorious countryside finally starting to shift the dial? I’ve heard good things about BeeRogi and Nice Knight in Denton, Gladstone in Stalybridge and Han Sik in Hyde, and now an ex-Dishoom chef has opened Everest Nepalese in Ashton, and Café Continental, seemingly inspired by 10 Tib Lane, with oysters, small plates and natural wines, is about to open in Stalybridge. Keep an eye on those house prices!
- The Good Food Guide’s Best Local Restaurants have been announced, and Cibus in Levenshulme topped the pile for the North-West. My favourites, Another Hand, The Edinburgh Castle, Higher Ground and The Sparrows also made the list for the region, along with The Pearl in Prestwich, Lily’s in Ashton, and From Bombay to Mumbai in Stockport. On a related note, this month’s schedule of professional eating took me on an inaugural visit to Stretford Canteen, which is pretty much an exemplar of what we’d all want our local neighbourhood restaurant to be. If you haven’t been, go.
- Keeping it Mancunian, I was delighted with the response to my Café Marhaba piece last month. It’s amazing how many people didn’t realise that ‘rice n three’ is a concept unique to the city, but as you may have seen in Jay Rayner’s recent review of Maida Grill, word of our cultural contribution is finally getting out! In other local news I find myself spending an increasing amount of time in Haunt on Peter St – it’s the perfect day-to-night venue, with great coffee, breakfasts, light bites, wine and beers – as well as its sister venue, Exhibition, next door. The latter is a three-kitchen food hall, and each of Baratxuri (Basque), Osma (Modernist Scandi-Brit) and Jaan (Middle Eastern/flatbreads) are excellent. You won’t find a better mid-week lunch from passionate indie operators in that end of town.
- A recent London trip took me to Oma, a fantastic wood-fired modern Greek place in Borough Market by the team behind Manteca. It made me consider that I probably get asked for London dining tips more than anywhere else outside of Manchester itself. So here is a sneak peek of my current hot list – I stress that this isn’t a compilation of my favourites or regular haunts (maybe I’ll do that another time), these are the places I myself am keen to try and yet to get to: Camile; Cloth; Donia; Dorian; The Hero; Josephine Bouchon; Kolae; Lita; Morchella; The Park Restaurant; and Silver Birch. Give them a Google, see which appeals, and let me know if you visit them.
