The Longridge Restaurant

My friends from Bolton (waving to Lesley B and Ruth) are fans of Paul Heathcote’s chain of restaurants and the Longridge is his flagship restaurant. So, on a foray ooop north, they took me and my sister for dinner here.
It’s a measure of its standing that despite its remote location, it can still draw in custom. We were navigationally challenged for awhile but managed to finally locate it.
It has the quiet swish of a fine dining restaurant. We quickly agreed on the tasting menu, which is called the Longridge experience menu.
I can find soup a bit wishy washy but the sweetcorn version here was given a hint of luxury with the addition of some morel mushrooms. A lovely way to start.
Then we had some seared scallops, which were served with onion purée, bacon, gnocchi and dill. Warm sea flavour enhanced with earthy bacon and sweetened with the onion purée. Genius combo.
Then a terrine, which again can be so so in my experience but this combined a few of my favourite ingredients — foie gras and sweetbreads together with wild rabbit, set off against tartare sauce. Rich but the tartare went surprisingly well with it.
The main course was a generous plate of duck, cooked and served in smaller bite sized pieces, together with creamed cabbage.
A small mango cheesecake palate cleanser followed.
We then had a technically perfect cherry soufflé, which was served with almost and sea salt ice cream.
Cooking of the highest quality. We had an opportunity to chat to the chef later at the bar and he was almost a contestant on Great British Menu til they found there was a conflict of interest with his boss being connected in some way with the program.
There’s also a chef’s table and cookery school running from the restaurant.
Worth a trip into the deepest darkest Preston countryside.