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Ten cool Good To Go’s in San Diego, California’s colourful border city

The last time I wrote about San Diego it was as a staging post on my road to discovering that the Brussels Sprout is cool in California. The foggy, coastal area south of San Francisco grows 95 cent of the American crop and it’s definitely not cool there to boil the little bullets into mushy oblivion. My Brassica oleracea gemmifera Damascene moment came in a downtown taproom, when shrimp tacos were accompanied by tempura sprouts – their natural hint of bitterness in harmony with the hop.

The Golden State’s Sprout Love is quite mainstream. Check out the menu at the Desmond Restaurant in San Diego’s Kimpton Alma Hotel on Fifth Avenue. For $19 you can order a plate of sprouts with dashi broth, Japanese curry, scallions and a poached egg. When I used the Kimpton as my base for exploring California’s most southerly city its culinary emphasis was elsewehere – on dishes from across the Mexican border 20 miles to the south.

Sprouts weren’t really what brought me to San Diego, though. Of all the places to live the West Coast dream it has few equals. Immoderately blessed with perfect weather, surf culture and pristine beaches, its laid-back attitude belies its history as a major deep sea harbour for the US Navy. 

So many major attractions to see but sometimes Seaworld and Aquatica, San Diego Zoo and the USS Midway Museum, based upon a legendary aircraft carrier, may have to take a backseat to exploring the possibilities of the city’s many cool hang-outs. Here are 10 suggestions to make you want to get up and go…

Go to the Park

Sounds a dull place to start? Not when you are talking Balboa Park, which stretches across 1,200 acres and encompasses everything from the 660 species San Diego Zoo to nearly 20 museums and a host of other venues in glorious lush gardens, the Japanese one the pick. Best place, for an overview is the California Tower, closed to the public for 80 years but now open for tours via seven sets of winding stairs from the Museum of Man. You are rewarded with a spectacular panorama of the city. You almost duck when low  planes fly past. The Park, a National Historic Landmark, is named after Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, in honour of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, held on the site. A Balboa Park Explorer Pass costs from from $56 for one day, giving access for up to four venues. For full city tourism information visit SanDiego.org.

Go El Greco

It seems appropriate that in a US city with so many Hispanic ties that the San Diego Museum of Art, among the country’s finest, should boast such a strong Spanish collection. Francisco de Zurbarán, Murillo, Juan Sánchez Cotán’s iconic Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber and, of course, El Greco. Check out his glorious Adoration of the Shepherds and the unearthly Penitent St Peter. The SDMA is not just about Old Masters; you’ll find benchmark collections of Indian art and 19th and 20th century American paintings and sculpture. All set in one of Balboa Park’s original Mission-style buildings, with a Platereresque frontage inspired by Salamanca in Spain.

Go fly a kite

After all that history it’s time to get the wind back in your sails. And where better than Embarcadero Marina Park? We didn’t exactly fly our own kite but it was good to see lots of them fluttering against the backdrop of the mighty Coronado Bridge. The breezy harbour-front Embarcadero walkway is jogger and dog walker heaven, while Seaport Village offers a cluster of folksy gift shops. The harbour is where it all began for San Diego back in 1542 when Juan Cabrillo sailed into the sheltered Bay. Loma Point, where the explorer stepped on shore is celebrated with a scenic National Monument. There are breathtaking views from here and the adjacent Ballast Point Lighthouse.

Go Gaslamping

It’s not all exhilarating green spaces. In a transformation typical of many American cities The Gaslamp Quarter, a once dead downtown, is now the centre of a food and drink-centric nightlife. A long period of neglect preserved the Victorian architecture of this 16 block historic district. Just wander around, looking up at the ornamentation of buildings such as the Romanesque Keating Building, ornate, domed Balboa Theatre and the hallucinogenic Louis Bank of Commerce, once home to a favourite bar of Wyatt Earp and the notorious brothel, the Golden Poppy Hotel. When your neck starts to get stiff there’s an abundance of bars to recover in. Restoring the green wrought-iron gas lamps (they actually run on electricity) was an inspired move to inspire after-dark footfall. We succumbed, dining at upmarket seafood restaurant Lionfish in The Pendry Hotel on Fifth Avenue.

Go for a beer

Ever-impressionable, where better to dip into San Diego’s unrivalled craft beer scene than the pioneering brewery that calls itself Ballast Point? It caused quite a splash in 2015 when it was bought for $1billion by an an international beverage group; last year its major rival Stone was snapped up by Japanese giant Sapporo. Craft is no longer all about plucky minnows. All quality dilution fears allayed at Ballast Point’s original brewtap up in the Little Italy district. The flagship Sculpin IPA, served unfiltered, was fantastic. Elsewhere, you are definitely spoiled for choice; there are over 150 breweries – check out the likes of Modern Times, Border X, Karl Strauss, Societe and Belching Beaver.

Go to market

Little Italy, these days more chic eaterie and art gallery territory than Genoese fishermen’s  slice of the ‘Old Country’, does offer the pick of the city’s farmer’s markets – the Little Italy Mercato open Wednesday and Saturday, straddling several streets, its 175 vendors showcasing the richness of Southern Californian food culture. We had brunched first at at Herb and Wood – immaculate baked goods, Kombucha, house-made bone broth and savoury specials such as salmon rillettes on avocado and sourdough. Very different to the Mercato, though equally buzzing, is Liberty Market, a seven days a week artisan-led operation in a former naval training complex. It’s an eclectic mix with a vintage comic bookshop rubbing shoulders with a feminist museum and and a bistro/boutique brewing facility run by Stone. The focus, though is the globally-influenced food hall, where you’re spoilt for choice. In the end I went for a trio of ceviches plus oysters and a sea urchin from the Poke Bar. Washed down in the ‘Mess Hall’ with sour beers sourced from the comprehensive Bottlecraft beer shop.

Go plant based, heavy metal brunch

As with craft beer and small batch coffee roasts, we in the UK are always playing catch-up with our West Coast cousins. So too with San Diego’s vegan culture. Combine it with a heavy metal ethos and you get Bar Kindred, cool even by the cool standards of its South Park setting (North Park isn’t bad either if you are into foraging for vintage vinyl, thrift store chic, hipster brews and chakra practitioners). There’s no booking at Kindred, so get there early for breakfast cocktails, drop biscuits with mushroom gravy, then brunch mains that might deliver calypso beans, soy curls, maitake mushrooms, charred kale, jicama salsa and Creole aioli. Ask if you can sit under the giant four-eyed snake wolf. No wi-fi. Well, we said it was heavy. 

Go grab a coffee 

Locals claim the city’s coffee culture rivals or even surpasses Portland and Seattle’s. Amazingly there are 1,900 coffee shops in the city, so definitely a risk of caffeine overload in your quest for the best. I asked the locals and they came up with this trio: Black Horse (North Park, Normal Heights and Golden Hill) and the Barrio Logan district duo Cafe Moto and Cafe Virtuoso, the latter organic. A current fad elsewhere is to spike your morning ‘bullet’ coffee with a shot of omega-3-rich flax oil or fat-burning coconut oil. Avoid.

Go to the beach

There is a string of strands to show off your beach body all along the coast. We ended up at La Jolla, which boasts some of the USA’s most expensive beach front real estate and boutique shopping to match. Ostensibly we were there for kayaking to the La Jolla Sea Caves with the added carrot of possible whale or shark watching but, gauging the ocean swell, I chickened out and instead sauntered the length of the beach for refreshment at Caroline’s clifftop cafe at the fascinating Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Lunch was at award-winning Galaxy Tacos. Ask for the terrace; order the essential Baja rried fish with chile lime crema, avocado mousse, cabbage, pico de gallo or the more unusual Lengua (tongue) with cilantro, onions and  avocado salsa verde. Sprouts here come roasted with chipotle mayo. If you stay until sunset I’d recommend a cocktail and sea view at Level 42 at ‘California Modern’ restaurant Georges at the Cove. 

Go hiking

The coastline to the north of La Jolla offers a string of laid-back beach towns, seafood and surfing, along the legendary Route 101, but before you get to all that take in the managed wilderness of Torrey Pines State Reserve. The name gives away its raison d’etre – preserving 3,000 endangered examples of the US’s rarest pine tree, Pinus Torreyana, which only grows here and on Santa Rosa Island off Santa Barbara. Below the 1,750 acre clifftop reserve you’ll find one of the last great salt marshes and waterfowl refuges in Southern California. The well-kept trails – family-friendly or more testing – provide stunning views of the Pacific. ‘Beware of rattlesnakes’ notices made me watch where I was putting my dusty Vans.

Go Chicano

Eighty colourful, politically provocative murals under a fly-over? Chicano Park is the emotional epicentre of the Barrio Logan district. Its painted pillars depict the life and struggles of San Diego’s Mexican community. Back in the Sixties, when the Coronado Bridge was constructed through it, the Park itself was the cultural focus of these struggles. It still is, its cultural importance confirmed by being granted National Historic Landscape Status in 2017. The street art has spread out across the Barrio now as vacant warehouses have become creative spaces and live music venues and authentic Mexican food is a big draw. At La Cuatro Milpas the tortillas are made fresh each day, while fish and chorizo are the tacos of choice at Salud! by the San Diego Taco Company. Alongside the Barrio coffee already mentioned there’s also a strong craft beer presence with the likes of Iron Fist and Border X Brewing (try the Blood Saison made with hibiscus). If all this has whetted your appetite for Mexico proper? Cross the border into Tijuana, the city once called ‘Satan’s Playground’. Be sure to sample Caesar’s Salad in its hotel birthplace (or if you can’t make it, try my recipe.)

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The power of Superstition – why I now make a beeline for artisan mead

I’m on  a journey. Let’s call it The Honey Wine Trail. I don’t know where it will end. Currently it’s confined to Joule, the Salford craft beer bar run by Kev Fenton and Kym Dawson. They are The Mead Hunters. Their shelves groan with melomels, pyments, cysters and hydromels. Mostly bottles from the States, where there are now over 500 craft meaderies, but also from Norway and, nearer home, Eccles.

Their own quest started in downtown Portland, Oregon over a year ago, before they opened in Chapel Street. At a beer festival, in search of West Coast hoppiness, they noticed that the busiest stand was dispensing mead. They joined the throng and got the taste. Every Hail Ragnar/Wrath of Odin in a goblet cliche was axed as the variety and complexity of the fermented honey beverage were unveiled. Now Joule stocks around 40 meads, ranging from bone-dry to honeyed (of course) sweetness.  

Flash forward to January 2023 and the pair are over in The States again. In New York they drop in on the Evil Twin brewery, ostensibly to check out barrel-aged stouts and the like. There they run into team Nostrum, mead-making neighbours in Queens and were invited round to theirs to sample their range, including a cannabis example.

Back in downtown Salford, fresh off the plane, in honour of my own new-found interest in mead, Kev broaches a 15.8 per cent Nostrum cherry mead, fermented with orange blossom honey and both tart and sweet cherries. The label of this Volume 01 Chapter 05 mysteriously adds: “This batch was then conditioned on Sourwood honey and given our ‘cheesecake treatment’. 

So we are not just talking a straight honey flavour from arguably the world’s first fermented alcohol drink, dating back some 12,000 years (way way beyond our own Beowulf and his mead hall). Honey, mixed with water and yeast (preferably wild) at the basic level, will do the trick, but it really needs more than honey for a vigorous fermentation. Hence the need for fruits, herbs even beer for the yeast to gobble and that in turn encourages the flavour profiles sought by artisan mead makers.

Add fruit and it’s a melomel. Apples or cider make a cyser. Grapes create a pyment. Herbs result in a metheglin. And out of a mead-beer collab comes a braggot.

I first encountered a braggot five years ago when Manchester’s (now Stockport’s) Runaway Brewery created an 8.5 per cent smoked example in collaboration with Brew Wild, using raw and unfiltered local honey from local beekeepers and fermented with Belgian yeast. I enjoyed its soft hybrid taste but regarded it as an anachronistic curiosity.

I was complacent too about the highest profile meadery in the North West – Horwich-based Lancashire Mead Makers. It was the proper stuff, not tourist tat, and crafted by an actual druid, active in the local pagan moot, I was told, with the branding matching the drink titles – Dragonsbreath Mead and Thor Mead.

All of which hadn’t prepared me for the post Big Apple tasing that followed at Joule. Stars of the show were undoubtedly the bottles from Superstition. Book me a ticket to Phoenix, Arizona. Although they have a downtown mead and tapas pairing restaurant in the state capital Jeff and Jenn’s Herbert’s meadery is actually two hours north in Prescott, the first territorial capital. Among the historic edifices that survived a 1900 fire is the Burmister Building, Superstition’s base.

At Joule, on the ground floor of Salford’s spanking new The Filaments apartment block, Kev poured me shots of three Superstition meads  – Super Bee (12%) Marion and Blue Berry White (each 13.5 per cent). The first of these is made in the traditional Polish Trozniak style using rare Arizonan Ironwood’ honey from local apiarists Bee Dudes and offers a pure honey rush; red-purple Marion is a fruitfest featuring juice from blueberries, blackberries and raspberries along with wildflower homey. First impression is jamminess then the acidity kicks in and you gauge its complexity.

Yet more complex, but definitely on the dessert end of the mead spectrum is Blueberry White. It shares roses on the nose with Marion but the palate is all chocolate and berries. Quite beguiling.

All three bottles have garnered awards aplenty in the highly competitive US craft mead scene. Other big hitters on the Joule list include Florida duo Garagiste from Tampa and  Pye Road (Odessa), New Hampshire’s Sap House and – lucky old Ferndale, Michigan – local rivals there B.Nektar and Schramm’s. The latter’s owner, Ken Schramm, has even write a definitive book on the subject – Complete Meadmaker.

Garagiste could probably pen their own gospel on sheer gustatory ambition for the drink. I‘m just hoping Joule will bring over their Cilice De-Lux melomel. “A base of local honey is enlivened with red currants, raspberries, and cherries. Then it’s blasted with a thick maraschino glaze from imported Luxardo cherries and finished on Bourbon staves that impart a rich undercurrent of molasses and caramel.”

At the bar 70ml pours are £13 for the American imports, £10 to £12 for other countries’, reflecting their rarity value on what is arguably the UK’s finest mead list. It was interesting to compare the meadery with the most representatives, Norway’s Marlobobo. Who also major in Quirky. What better name for a blackberry mead with vanilla beans than Bumfuzzle Vanizzle?

Vanilla’s obviously a big deal and is up front in their Care Full cyser (11.5%), made with a caramelised wildflower/heather honey and apple reduction, vanilla beans and cinnamon.

Equally delightful but more complex was Marlobobo’s gin barrel-aged raspberry mead, Introverted Escapism (10.5%).

Allow me to ‘borrow’ the description of its intricate production from the notes by online drinks merchants Indie Beer.  A 375ml bottle will cost you £41.

“Ripe and juicy Glen Ample raspberries were drenched in wildflower honey and fermented slow and cool with a yeast chosen to preserve all the nuances both ingredients brought to the table. Not a droplet of water was added.

“Three months later, Marlobobo got their hands on a very special gin barrel that they are not allowed to state the name of, and filled it to the brim with the glorious nectar above. The barrel wasn’t juniper forward at all, but bursted of soft, sweet citrus fruits and floral botanicals. The mead took a six-month break in this very special and fragrant gin barrel, before it was ready to come back even stronger and be released to an extroverted world.

“As well as obviously bursting of fresh raspberries drenched in honey, the barrel brought it to another dimension in terms of complexity. Giving away new flavours and nuances from each and every sip. From the sweet and fruity notes of fragrant lemon verbena, citrus rinds, spruce shoots and coriander seeds. To bright notes of forest berries like lingonberries and cranberries, and flowery notes of jasmine, sage and lavender.”

So not the simple honey booze you thought, eh? For a generation rediscovering a whole, artisan hinterland of drinks Mead is an avenue being increasingly ignored. Kev an Kim at Joule stock the Lost Verses meads from up the road – at just £5 a tipple – and hope to champion the Brood range from ex-Cloudwater brewer Connor Seagrave (above), whose day job is at Sureshot. He took up mead making during lockdown – “I wasn’t going to brew beer in the free time I now had,” he told me. “There was kombucha, but mead seemed more interesting and challenging.”

Currently after moving house and in search of new premises he’s between mead engagements. That should change by the summer. For the moment you can get a taste of his back catalogue at the Sureshot Taproom. On the evidence of a wonderfully balanced example he opened for me there recently –  Ta-Ta And Farewell (a semi sweet mead made with Spanish orange blossom honey, cherries, blackberries, blackcurrants and grapes) – the return to production can’t come soon enough.

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If I’ve got a bone to pick with you let it be Hoppers’ signature marrow varuval

The recent consignment from Swaledale Butchers that brought me my epic St John Haggis also included a quartet of marrow bone canoes – perfect receptacles for another all-time Fergus Henderson classic. 

Since my epiphany at his St John Smithfield restaurant 20 years ago I‘ve wolfed molten ox marrow topped with herby crumbs and garlic (pictured above) everywhere from various Hawksmoors to the now vanished Spotted Pig in New York’s West Village, which used to host an annual Fergus-Stock event with its culinary hero in attendance.

The canoes are cut from the the femur and split lengthways through the bone fully exposing the marrow. Less fiddly access and perfect for roasting. Seven minutes in a medium oven will do. Don’t over-cook. A single canoe can accompany a steak, but scooping the ooze out of it with sourdough toast is perhaps the most satisfying approach, raw onion, capers and parsley on the side. In his inimitable prose Fergus suggests: “Lightly chop your parsley, just enough to discipline it.”

Marrow bone varuval in all its glory
A signature hopper with its egg

So what did I do with my marrowy haul? Went all Sri Lankan instead. Adapted arguably the most popular dish on the menu at the Hoppers group in London. In my Christmas food and drink book recommendations I rated Cynthia Shanmugalingam’s Rambutan as the only Sri Lankan cookbook you need. I’ve ignored my own advice and also acquired the gorgeously produced Hoppers: The Cookbook (Hardie Grant, £30) by its founder Karan Gokani. There on page 256 I discovered Bone Marrow Varuval. High octane spice. Its contents perfect for tipping into the signature hoppers, the fermented rice flour crepes (often served with an egg) namechecked for the brand.

As so often happens, my attempt doesn’t look as gorgeous as the restaurant version but still tasted wonderful (see the sequence below). Without a specialist hopper pan I didn’t risk that element.

Raw
Cooked
Enjoyed

BONE MARROW VARUVAL

Ingredients

For the curry: 6 five inch shin bones, split lengthways, 300g red onions, finely sliced, 10 curry leaves, 1 tbsp minced garlic, 1 tsp minced ginger, ½ tsp turmeric, 2 tsp red chilli powder, 1½ tbsp double concentrated tomato paste, 2 green chillies, deseeded and cut in half lengthways, 200ml beef stock, 100ml coconut milk, salt to taste.

Spice paste: 100g freshly grated coconut, 1 tsp fennel seeds, 4 green cardamom pods, 2 tbsp coriander seeds, 4 red chillies, deseeded, ½ tsp cumin seeds, 5 tbsp oil.

Garnish: 2 tbsp oil, 10 curry leaves.

Method

Deep fry the sliced onions for a few minutes, or until golden brown. Drain on kitchen paper. Lay the marrow bones out in a tray and sprinkle a pinch of sea salt over the cut side. Roast for six minutes.

To make the spice paste heat 2 tbsp oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the coconut to it and fry until golden brown. Set aside in a bowl and wipe down the pan.

Heat another tablespoon of oil in the same pan and fry all the remaining ingredients for the spice paste on medium-low heat for 2 minutes. Add them to the coconut and blitz everything to a thick paste, adding a little bit of water.

Heat a wide heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat. Add 1 tbsp of oil to it and add the curry leaves, fried onions, ginger and garlic and fry for a couple of minutes, adding a splash of beef stock if it looks dry. Add the turmeric and red chilli powder and fry for 30 seconds. Tip in the tomato paste and green chillies and cook for about 2 minutes. Add the spice paste along with the remaining beef stock and coconut milk. Simmer it all until it reduces to a thick sauce. Season to taste. Transfer the roasted bones to the curry sauce and simmer for 5-8 minutes. Once the bone marrow has finished cooking through, garnish with the fried curry leaves.

Hoppers has three restaurants across London – in Soho, King’s Cross and Marylebone. The latter district is also home to the latest outpost of Fergus Henderson’s St John.

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Here’s the catch! How I chose seafood over pies at garlanded Parkers Arms

A flock of dark birds shoots up off Standridge Hill as I hurtle north from Clitheroe to my destination, the newly crowned UK number one gastropub. A conspiracy of ravens? A murder of crows? Far from an ill omen in fulfilling times for the Parkers Arms.

It has already been picked over (in a positive way) by the swooping media in the 12 days since triumphing in the Estrella Top 50 list. If levelling up in any meaningful economic sense is light years away, well all the better to salute a plucky Northern food success story. And the hard-fought 15 year tenure of Stosie Madi, Kathy Smith and Adrian Nolan is the very definition of that.

At least I know my way well to the white-washed inn in the remote hamlet of Newton-by-Bowland. I‘ve booked this Saturday lunchtime treat well before all the ‘four minutes of fame’. Back to omens. I have previous this year with Estrella Damm. For my June birthday I’d booked Yynyshir in February; two weeks later it won its second Michelin star and three days before our arrival it topped the Estrella 50 Best Restaurants list. So don’t call me an albatross around the neck.

Enough ornithology. The main room fire is lit and Captain Smidge the chihuahua and I are ensconced beside it. “That’s lit by the cleaning lady … one of the few tasks we don’t have to do,” Adrian, aka AJ, confides as he pours me a large Viognier. He’s 65 next birthday, a couple of years younger than his sister Kathy. Stosie’s in her fifties. Their energy is remarkable. All three remember the desolate times when punter footfall didn’t match their ambition. Even at the pinnacle they modestly tell me: “We went along to the awards, more than happy not to drop out of the Top 10.” They inched into second last year after a steady climb up the charts.

At the end of the glorious meal to come the trio, good sports, will join Smidge for a photo destined for my chefs’ calendar project ‘Tongues Out for the Chihuahua’. Not quite the accolade of the Top 50 celebrations with their peers but an honour none the less. And a rare chance to greet chef Stosie outside the kitchen, where she is intensely focused. 

Stosie and Kathy at the Awards
Back home joined by Adrian and Smidge

She tells me she had been so delighted I’d resisted ordering a pie. This might seem contrary when the house pies are justly celebrated (proper pastry courtesy of front of house Kathy) but Stosie is keen to demonstrate her considerable range. 

As it happens there’s no way I‘m ordering curried Burholme Farm Mutton with its offal pie in roasted mutton fat pastry, however tempting; my home-made supper later is a mutton dhansak. As for a potato and Lancashire cheese pie, well it fades in its allure when there’s the prospect of a Grilled Whole Cornish Turbot (at a £15 supplement) among the mains on the £45 three course menu.

There’s a whopper turbot in the fish larder, so Stosie offers me the option of a less fiddly tranche off it in a Champagne sauce. I accept. With in-house cured anchovies my chosen starter and the chef sending out ample tasters for me of Whitby crab and charcoal-grilled mackerel I‘m definitely steered towards the sea.

Those anchovies, done boquerones style, weeks in the creation, are sublime. With springy house bread I mop up every drop of parsley flecked olive oil and fork up seasonal blood orange segments.

Smidge shares the bread and my mackerel – Cornish sourced, like the anchovies and turbot. The crab is Whitby and comes pleasantly ungussied up in a brown meat bisque. If this is superior pub grub, the turbot is something else, pearly flesh in a shimmering pool of buttery sauce. I am tempted to stay on for evening service and order a whole one off the grill.

Most of the lunchtime customers around us are  ordering Valrhona chocolate and peanut butter slice for their puds. I stay seasonal with an iced rhubarb parfait, using the proper forced stuff from the legendary Robert Tomlinson of Pudsey. Tough choice, though, with competition from Seville orange marmalade ice cream accompanying Wet Nelly tart – Kathy’s homage to her frugal Lancashire roots.

Business partner Stosie’s own roots are more tangled. Senegalese by birth, of Lebanese heritage, she quit strife-torn Gambia when her daughter was 10. She had already run three well-respected restaurants with Kathy over there. It was quite a leap in 2007 to take over a creaky pub on the edge of the Trough of Bowland. 

Down the road at The Three Fishes in Mitton Nigel Haworth was putting a supplier-led spin on regional food, but he was a prophet in the licensed wilderness. It was hard to imagine the current embarrassment of culinary riches across the region. At no.3 in the Top 50 Gastropubs is the Freemasons at Wiswell, The White Swan at Fence is at no.7, one place behind Michael Wignall’s Angel at Hetton, just across the Yorkshire border.

As I round up the little hound to leave Adrian is bolting the front door. Parkers shuts each day between 3pm and 5.30pm, Thursdays to Saturdays and is open 12pm-4pm on Sunday. The pub accommodates hikers and the like popping by for a pint with Bowland Ales on handpump, but serving food is priority. Acclaim has only increased the pressure there. “We couldn’t survive as an off the beaten track, wet-led boozer, opening most weekdays,” says Adrian. “Without the food we wouldn’t still be here.”

And what food. Better than ever. Flying high.

Parkers Arms, Hall Gate Hill, Newton-In-Bowland, nr Clitheroe BB7 3DY.

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