Star attractions
A winter festival of food and wines is warming the hearts of diners in the depths of winter at a Michelin-starred restaurant. All 18 nights are sold out – but Christine Austin supplies a taste of the event.
IT is winter. The evenings are dark, cold and everyone’s Christmas bills are landing on doormats, so restaurants have difficulty filling their tables. But just over the border into Lancashire there is one famous restaurant that has sold every seat, in advance, for 18 consecutive evenings. Obsession24 is a gastronomic festival at the Michelin-starred Northcote in Langho which sees a series of 18 world-class chefs take command of the Northcote’s kitchen. They bring their menus, their speciality ingredients and their signature dishes to a group of diners, some of whom have travelled huge distances to get a table.
This year’s list of all the chefs and their restaurant names are too many to mention, but they all have at least one Michelin star and they include Gareth Ward from Ynyshir in Wales, Adam Handling from The Frog in London, Henrique Sá Pessoa from Alma in Lisbon and
Michel Roux from Le Gavroche. Heading the list is Northcote’s executive chef, Lisa GoodwinAllen who has led her team of chefs for more than 20 years and has maintained Northcote’s Michelin star for all that time.
“Is it difficult handing your kitchen over to so many chefs for almost three weeks?” I asked Lisa, before the launch of Obsession 2024. “We try to make sure that every chef has exactly what they need to create their menus,” she said, ‘and the young chefs who work here learn so much from the visiting chefs.” When I was in the kitchen, as well as Lisa’s brigade who were preparing the launch night’s menu, there were chefs from Alex Greene’s Deanes EIPIC Belfast restaurant, busy with some vital elements for the following night’s dinner. This is a lively, well-organised kitchen.
Lisa and her team created a fabulous menu for the launch night of Obsession24. There were precise, balanced flavours, perfect presentation and a gentle pace that allowed five courses to be enjoyed in a relaxed style. However, Obsession24 is a celebration of food and wine, and the wine deserves just as much attention as the food.
Each course comes with a suggested wine match and diners can choose these wines by the glass. The wines have been specially chosen to fit around the dish, enhancing but not challenging the food, and all the wines are supplied by a Yorkshire company, The Wright Wine Co, based in Skipton.
Craig Bancroft, managing director at Northcote, is the person in charge of buying all the wine for Obsession24 as well as the restaurant. “I used to deal with all the major importers and London merchants, but it became so complicated with minimum orders and delivery times that I decided to have just one supplier, and The Wright Wine Company is the perfect partner. They give us the best service we could possibly need and have done for over 30 years.”
From their own list of over 700 wines, Julian Kaye, managing director of The Wright Wine Co, works with Craig and his team to perfectly match the key flavours of each dish for Obsession24. The real challenge is at 2pm on the day that the dish will be served when the wine is tasted against the finished dish. “And that is when we might make changes to the wine’, said Julian. That happened on launch night this year when a Leeuwin Estate Riesling had been selected to accompany the starter of Scottish grilled mackerel dish that came with Sturia caviar, fermented grape and dill. At the afternoon
tasting it was decided that the Riesling might overwhelm the overall balance of the dish, and it was substituted for a perfectly excellent Pinot Gris from Ata Rangi in New Zealand. An array of wines followed. Cuilleron’s Condrieu with roast veal sweetbreads, Au Bon Climat’s Chardonnay with wild turbot, Voerzio’s Nebbiolo with squab pigeon and truffle followed by a Moscatel de Setúbal with a stunning chocolate dessert.
The most amazing detail about supplying all the wines for this gastronomic festival and for regular diners throughout the year is that Julian and his team are on standby to deliver wines at the drop of a hat. It is just 23 miles from the shop in Skipton to Northcote in Langho and if a particular wine is needed urgently, then someone jumps in a car and delivers it. “Sometimes we meet halfway, just to get the wine to the customer.” Does this happen very often? I asked. “Not often, but we have had occasions when a guest orders six bottles of a top champagne and if we only have three in stock then we need Julian and his team to get the wine to us before the guest has finished the third bottle,” said Craig.
Julian and his team are totally involved in the selection of wines for Obsession, and make sure that there are no duplications throughout the festival and even from one year to the next. There is a huge variety of seriously good wines on show at this event which means that The Wright Wine Co. is dealing with many suppliers and handling a lot of stock. No wonder Julian is always in the warehouse when I try to talk to him. It also means that once in a while there is a bin end sale in Skipton to help clear the decks and this year Good Friday has been pencilled in for that sale.
While good food and wine is the focus for Obsession at Northcote, as well as bringing new talents and flavours to their guests, there is another aim, which is to raise money for charity. Over the last few years Obsession has raised over £400,000 for Hospitality Action which supports workers in the hospitality sector.
If you like the idea of going to Obsession to experience this fabulous mix of fine food and wine that is regularly referred to as the ‘Glastonbury of Gastronomy’, then you will have to wait until 2025, and you need to get your name down fast. Some events sell out within minutes. Call the Northcote and get on their mailing list to have a chance, next year, of drinking fine wines and dining with some of the best chefs in the world.