Tag Archive for: Tasting Menu

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Metamorphica – chef whizz Steven works his magic on an extinct Roebuck

Courageous is the only way to describe opening a self-funded 12-cover, tasting menu based restaurant in a small Lancashire town with no history of cutting edge dining.

Restaurant Metamorphica is soft launching in Haslingden, as I write. Well behind schedule because of unprecedented times, yet lockdowns allowed chef/patron (ie one man band) Steven Halligan to create from scratch the project he has dreamed about since his catering student days. 

His promise was always apparent. By the age of 20 he won Greater Manchester Young Chef of the Year; two years later he was runner-up for the North West Young Chef of The Year. All this as he was fast-tracked through some impressive kitchens – notably Room and Mr Cooper’s House and Garden in Manchester – justifying his decision to spurn university. Even in 2021, while diverting towards Metamorphica, he made it to the semi-finals of National Chef of the Year.

Yet it always rankled that from the age of 16 cold water was poured upon his vision to one day run a restaurant of his own. The aim to follow in the footsteps of his chef heroes across the world, whose hefty cookbooks grace his new dining space in a former pub. Now 28, Bury-born Steven is ready to prove the doubters wrong.

Herculean best describes the effort put in by him and his father to make this happen. Crowdfunding was never going to be an option without the necessary high profile. So it has been a case of amassing used kitchen equipment for a song, hands-on graft turning an aborted Indian grill conversion into a destination more suited to the constantly evolving menus he wants to put out. The only impossible to avoid outlay was to an electrician. Steven reckons hiring outside help instead of doing it all themselves would have cost them an undoable £150,000.

What best symbolises the rebirth of the corner site just off Haslingden town centre is the window retained from its previous incarnation as the Roebuck boozer versus the butterfly logo that partly justifies the ‘Metamorphica’ monicker of Steven’s restaurant.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses sprang to mind. Not so. I’m happy to accept it might have its foundation in Metamorphica, the classic magic trick associated with Houdini and brought brought up to date by musician Criss Angel. Maybe Steven is metaphorically breaking free from a box that constrained him. Maybe referencing the metamorphic rocks caused by compression? Or mirroring the shape changing stages out of which a butterfly emerges.

A thing of beauty. So is the menu also? On paper, certainly, and after relishing a couple of handsome snacks I can’t wait to sample the real deal when all is settled in…

The first ‘development’ menu featured brioche and cheese; tomatoes, lovage, cream; house loaf and butter; mackerel, cucumber, chervil; pollock, herb tea, parsley, pink peppercorn, sesame, mead; pigeon, plum, rye; goat’s cheese, mirabelle, sorrel; lamb, apple, turnip; anise, apple, honey; almond and meadowsweet millefeuille; blackcurrant pate de fruits.

Until June 30 he is serving this kind of menu for ‘Just The Chef’ events each night, hosting 

only four customers at the open kitchen chef’s table. It will cost of £63 per head (with an optional six-strong ‘drinks journey’), compared with the eventual £78 per person for for 11 courses, maximum covers per night 12. For the foreseeable it’s to be just Steven both in the prep kitchen and front of house with his dad helping with the washing up. The chef’s own first taste of hospitality was as over a sink as a kitchen porter at his Auntie’s gastropub in 2008.

From there it has been a prodigious learning curve – eating in Copenhagen’s finest or the Eleven Madison Avenue, the New York three star of one particular inspiration, Daniel Humm, or working a stage at Philip Howard’s The Square (now closed) in London. Check out the Metamorphica website and you’ll find encomiums to many heroes and mentors, global and local, but also a fierce disillusionment with the way hospitality can stifle talent, too.

In his two years at Mr Cooper’s House and Garden (2AA Rosette and Michelin Bib Gourmand), inside Manchester’s Midland Hotel Steven rose to sous chef, becoming interim head chef for his final six months. You sense in the end he was keen for a personal challenge elsewhere. A short consultancy management role at Stockport’s influential Where The Light Gets In helped whet his appetite to do his own independent thing.

Hence Restaurant Metamorphica. Still a work in progress this steely mission statement about following your dream. Haslingden as an acclaimed gourmet destination? I definitely wouldn’t bet against it.

Restaurant Metamorphica, 1 Charles Lane, Haslingden, Rossendale, BB4 5EA. 01706 614617.

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Review: Five course Gourmet Menu at Northcote

Last October at home prepping up my Northcote Autumn Gourmet Box I wore the apron that was the legacy of a 2014 Cookery School experience there (I buggered up the Beef Wellington, as I recall). I’ve a soft spot for the place, love the Obsessions festival every January that has brought a global smorgasbord of chefs to this corner of the Ribble Valley and go back further with them than1996 when they won the Michelin star they’ve held ever since.

It’s 38 years since Nigel Haworth and Craig Bancroft were given the chance to turn this Victorian pile into a fine dining mecca with rooms. In the Nineties when Ribble Valley Restaurants were suddenly ‘rock n’ roll’ you were either Haworth or Heathcote (Paul), like being Beatles or Rolling Stones. Well, almost.

Lisa Goodwin-Allen worked her way up to exec chef through the Northcote ranks

Now part of the Stafford Collection luxury portfolio (not a bad thing) Northcote is definitely on the top of its game despite all the constrictions of a pandemic. All helped by the high profile of exec chef Lisa Goodwin-Allen who took on the Great British Menu mantle of her mentor Nigel.

He is doing his own thing these days and, as I write, is about to bring back from the dead The Three Fishes, the groundbreaking regional produce-inspired gastropub he created a few miles up the road at Mitton. Sold on with the rest of the Ribble Valleys Inn Group, it shut in 2019.

Remaining under the new regime, sidekick Craig (ebullient front of house/wine guru) is,  welcoming us this sunlit Thursday lunchtime to sample Lisa’s £95 five-course Spring Gourmet Menu. For lunch you must book it specially. In the evening, as Northcote cuts its cloth to accommodate the current challenges, it’s available either of two sittings, as we await the reintroduction of a la carte.

The revamped terrace gives Northcote fresh options – and it’s a perfect spot for a wedding shot

Encouraging is the buzz a wedding party on the spanking new outdoor terrace. Along with a full house of folk, most of whose own nuptial are decades back, we are consigned to the dining room, which shares the same rural vistas. Hard to credit the busy A59 is only 200 metres away.

The matching wine flight is £53.80. I’m often wary of ceding choice but this is pretty solid, notably two whites – the Abstraction #1 Muscadet Sur Lie from Guerin (with Orkney Scallop) and Redoma Branco from Nierpoort in Portugal’s Douro Valley (Wild Turbot) – and a perfumed Bruno Sourdais Chinon red from the Loire.

Poussin the boat out! Lisa treats the bird to a garlic and allium makeover

The latter was the perfect match for my favourite dish, a Norfolk Poussin. Also known as coquelets, poussins are the baby chickens much cherished by the French. They rarely weigh in above 500g and are perfect for quick grilling. 

My first encounter came courtesy of enterprising online butcher Farmeson and in my home kitchen I followed a recipe from Wild Honey’s Anthony Demetre. This involved spatchcocking – removing the backbone from tail to neck so the bird can be opened out flat – and an overload of garlic and herbs. 

Lisa treats it differently. Garlic featured again, one white blob and a swirl of on-trend black garlic, its long caramelisation imparting a subtle liquorice tone. Hen of the woods mushroom and a baby allium poached in ponzu ramped up the succulence. 

The trim breast and a cute little croquette of leg meat may have lacked the splayed splendour of my effort but they were  delicious testimony to canny UK sourcing. Norfolk poussins are corn-fed and reared ethically for their short lives in Fakenham as an alterntib from importing from France. 

Lisa’s previous course of Wild Turbot feels very spoonable, foamy GBM. It’s another little marvel incorporating clam, cucumber, sea lettuce and dill in a saline-inclusive broth.

Like the whole menu, it sings of the season. I love the sorrel granita that adds a lemony counterpoint to Yorkshire Asparagus (green, from Sand Hutton I’m presuming) and basil gel but also the combo of Isle of White heritage tomato textures that lifts a perfectly seared Orkney scallop.

Amalfi lemon inspired dessert completed a satisfying meal, but could we resist the petits fours?

Admirable restraint, matched to accomplished technique, culminates in a masterly pud celebrating the Amalfi lemon and Limoncello. It’s a work of art that almost convinces me tangy powders and meringue splinters are for me. Still a pretty Michelin-friendly plateful. Which bring us back to the admirable Michelin substitute delivered to us in October 2020 as an alternative to the forbidden delights of restaurant dining.

It was easily the best menu kit we encountered during lockdown. But this recent Northcote visit was proof that nothing can replace the real thing. Especially where washing up by someone else is concerned.

Northcote, Northcote Road, Langho, Blackburn BB6 8BE. 01254 240555. For information on a variety of gourmet breaks visit the website but be warned, plan ahead. They’re full up well into the autumn.

There’s a fascinating interview with Lisa Goodwin-Allen in trade magazine Supper, where she discusses the challenges that have sprung from the pandemic and lockdowns. She also sing the praises of the Norfolk Poussin! Read it here.

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