I suppose bread and dripping had to be on the menu at Eight at Gazegill. Lancashire people are proudly provincial. But chef Doug Crampton, who is originally from Leeds and worked at James Martin’s Manchester flagship, is no arch-traditionalist. The bread is fermented potato flatbread and the dripping-doused roast potatoes come with Yorkshire pudding. The Sunday lunch menu (£45 per person) also contains wild garlic veloute, hogweed and hibiscus – hardly the kind of grub you get at home.
Eight at Gazegill, which opened in March, is the latest venture to propel the Ribble Valley onto the national food map. It’s located on an organic farm run by Emma Robinson and Ian O’Reilly, who have built a strong business selling meat boxes. Six years in the making, the restaurant is a striking green oak, glass-walled octagonal building. Fields lie all about and you can see the ridge-like back of Pendle Hill – the magnificent Pennine outlier that dominates the upper Ribble Valley.
