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Obsession

By Sarah Rodrigues

11 Months Ago

“ What makes Obsession so unique is the team: their humanity and friendship.”

 

Eating out has always been a pleasurable activity; something to be engaged in with friends, family, or lovers, something to add a convivial edge to business dealings. Perhaps we used to take such enjoyment for granted, but since the events of 2020, it’s unlikely that we’re quite so cavalier. Of the pandemic’s several dark blessings, one has been that the act of convening for a meal in a restaurant has taken on even greater significance than before.

Yet this significance was never something to be taken lightly. Across cultures and millennia, food has drawn people together. It has evoked discussions, sometimes playful and sometimes heated, about the ‘best’ or ‘right’ way to make certain dishes. Most of all, it has transcended boundaries and reflected our basic humanity.

It’s this elemental aspect of food that’s reflected in Obsession, the fine dining festival that takes place annually at Lancashire’s Northcote. Chefs may have the reputation for being as fiercely territorial of their kitchens as teenagers are of their bedrooms, but Obsession might see a three Michelin-starred chef taking over the Northcote kitchen one night, and a renowned but yet-unstarred chef the next.

This, of course, is also testament to the standard of the kitchen itself, which has retained its Michelin star for 27 years running, with Executive Chef Lisa Goodwin-Allen at the helm for 22 of those.

Established in 2001, chefs have travelled from all over the world to participate in this most prestigious of events – and guests, too, make the pilgrimage to Lancashire to avail themselves of the opportunity to eat expertly crafted meals in a world class, yet semi-rural, setting.

The first Obsession was a relatively modest affair, held over three nights and one lunch. It saw Newcastle’s Terry Laybourne, now head of the 21 Hospitality Group, opening proceedings with five courses: Potato Terrine with Caviar, followed by Celeriac Soup with Black Truffle, Tempura of Lobster and Fennel, Reg’s Duck (cooked five ways) and for dessert, Coconut Pannacotta.

Laybourne may not have known it at the time, but this menu was to launch over 20 years of Obsession – and over 200,000 plates of food served to guests. Since 2001, the event has spanned as many as 19 nights, before settling at a more reasonable – but no less magnificent – 17. Other than a pandemic-induced hiatus in 2021, the event has returned every year, showcasing the best of global culinary talent and perfectly paired wines. While the chef line-up for 2024 is yet to be confirmed, we speak, on the following pages, to some of the names who have made Obsession as extraordinary as it is today.

Before becoming one of the UK’s finest chefs, Lisa Goodwin-Allen worked at her father’s scrapyard in Lancashire. It’s a beginning that sits somewhat oddly with the exquisite nature of her dishes, but she’s quite matter-of-fact when she says that the expectation was probably that she’d end up working there full-time after school.

Besides, she points out, both paths share a need for being hands-on, which is something she’s always enjoyed – but it was through cooking that she found she could express herself.

“I was always very inquisitive and once I discovered my passion for cooking, I looked into ways to further myself,” she says. “I did a college course and loved it – I never missed a day; I was always wanting to learn and develop new techniques. I worked on my days off, including at Northcote and a one-star in the Lakes – I did as much as I could to work in other kitchens and get as much experience as possible. Everywhere you learn, you’re always learning something different.”

When she came to Northcote in 2001, as a 20-year-old demi chef de partie, Lisa found herself going from a team of three to a team of ten. “What I learnt from the experience, and from Nigel
[Haworth, co-founder and former Chef Patron at Northcote], was so valuable,” she says. Her passion for always going the extra mile wasn’t ever quenched, however. “Every time an opportunity, via someone leaving, presented itself, I wanted that position,”she says,“and I got my head down and worked really hard for it.” By the age of 23, she was Northcote’s Head Chef – an extraordinary achievement, especially given the fact that kitchens were still very much a man’s world at the time. “The thing that I love the most about food is that it’s so diverse,” says Lisa, whose involvement with Obsession began in its second year. “You can show emotions through food.” And, in keeping with the restaurant’s loyal, local customer base, there is an emphasis on seasonal, locally-sourced produce in Lisa’s dishes.

“We’re lucky to be in this part of Lancashire and to have such amazing suppliers and producers around us,” she says, with a humility that you quickly realise is part of her – and Obsession’s – success. “When you ask a chef to come and cook in your kitchen and they say ‘yes,’ it’s an honour,” says Lisa, “so it’s incumbent upon me to make sure that they arrive to a well-organised kitchen.”

Each Obsession has had its own high points, but Lisa recalls 2022 as being particularly special and celebratory, coming, as it did, after the pandemic. Due to uncertainty around overseas travel, they decided to focus on talent from the Great British Isles “and the support was just phenomenal,” she says. “The vibe was amazing. We brought the house down.”

Since arriving at Northcote in 1983 as General Manager, Craig has clocked up a list of awards as long as his arm, demonstrating his excellence in both hospitality and wine. These are skills that he brings, not only to the day-to-day running of the establishment, but also to Obsession, where an ever-changing menu means that his wine-pairings must be amended on a nightly basis for a period of over two weeks.

“But this is what we’ve been doing for 39 years,” he laughs, pointing out that the Northcote’s tasting menu is changed four times a year and the lunch menu, every six weeks. “I’m not saying it’s without its challenges, but we all come together and make it work. Over the course of Obsession, we never repeat a wine – so we’re talking about over 120 wines – but that’s just what we do.”

Northcote, having formerly been a private house, “wasn’t really anything” when Craig arrived in 1983. “It had four bedrooms and a dining room of about 40, plus a small private dining room of 12–14.” By the time Lisa arrived in 2001, the number of rooms had grown to 14 (there are now 26), and the restaurant and private dining room had both expanded, to seat 60 and 30, respectively.

Obsession was the brainchild of Nigel Haworth, who co-founded Northcote with Craig, before stepping back to concentrate on his own projects in 2017. Returning from a food festival in Monterrey, at which he’d been invited to cook, he was fired up by the idea of producing something similar at Northcote.

It was a massive undertaking, not least because of Northcote’s relatively remote position – in fact, says Craig, one of their best customers was so concerned about the team losing money on it that he bought the entire lunch event, for 80 guests.

“To be honest, it continued to be a financial risk for many years,” admits Craig. “We just wanted to keep doing it, so we expanded to five nights the following few years, and then seven, before doing ten for our tenth anniversary and fifteen for our fifteenth.”

After this, the team started to add one night per year but have since settled on the sweet spot of 17 nights, which allows them to incorporate three weekends. Despite the financial risk, it was evident early on the project had momentum – within two years of its inception, Heston Blumenthal was one of the guest chefs, which was, Craig says, “‘ground-breaking. Once these big names started to get involved, others wanted to follow suit, and it just grew.” By 2012, a purpose-built kitchen had been added to the property, designed with Obsession – and the space it requires – in mind.

Although guests come from all over the country -– and even some from overseas – to attend Obsession, it should be noted, says Craig “that we are a 26-bedroom property, and during Obsession, many of those bedrooms are occupied by the chefs, to whom we strive to give the best possible guest experience. So actually, Obsession has been genuinely grown by the people who live within 25 miles of the property.”

John Williams MBE has earned a slew of awards throughout his career, including, in 2022, the Lifetime Achievement Award at the AA Hospitality Awards. Although he has held the position of Executive Chef at The Ritz for almost 20 years, his beginnings in food were humbler, developing his passion for cooking at home in Tyneside with his mother. “My father was a fisherman, so fish was a constant from the outset,” he recalls. “I was one of six children, and my mam cooked for all of us. Her cooking was very simple – lots of stews and soups – and she didn’t experiment with recipes; she had her regular dishes.”

Set in her culinary ways she may have been, but John’s mother was evidently onto a winning formula – so much so that the young Williams would run one and half miles to and from home at lunchtime to eat her cooking, rather than countenance school dinners. “I was very sporty and always hungry, but I hated the smell of school dinners,” he says. “I always wanted something with more flavour.”

These early principles became the foundation on which John builds his menus, saying that “all dishes start with a fundamental understanding of taste and how flavour combinations are married together.” As Executive Chef at The Ritz, John oversees a 60+-strong kitchen team. He creates the seasonal menus for the Michelin-starred Ritz Restaurant, as well as overseeing the hotel’s Rivoli Bar, room service and famed afternoon teas. What qualities are needed to shoulder such responsibilities, and to manage such numbers of staff?

“Integrity, above all else,” says John. “Humility and the ability to listen to others are also key, as are leadership skills and the ability to understand taste.” As refined as his ability to understand the tastes of his varied and exacting clientele is, John veers towards simpler dishes when he’s off duty.

“I think my body craves uncomplicated tastes, such as a traditional Sunday roast when I’m at home – and I hardly ever eat dessert,” he says. “For Saturday brunch, we often have eggs scrambled with Cheddar or Gruyere cheese, with a side of streaky bacon – absolutely delicious.”

As someone who eschews dessert at home, if he were to advise a guest to leave room for one course, which course would it be? “That’s a difficult question,” he muses. “I think the first taste of food is always the best – it’s the highly anticipated introduction to the meal – so I’d say that the first course is the unmissable one.”

An ardent Royalist, John notes that cooking for HM the King or, in her lifetime, HM the Queen, is the greatest of honours. “You want everything to be perfect,” he says. When it comes to perfection, however, chefs often have a reputation for being harsh and exacting – how does this blend with the humility, noted above, required for the job? “It’s incredibly humbling to recognise the amount of work, and emotion, that a young person puts into the execution of a dish,” says John, “and when they get it right, the joy you witness … it’s just amazing. At this moment, I’m looking across the kitchen at The Ritz and observing a future superstar: it’s an amazing sensation.”

Having been in the industry for so long, and now watching young stars in the making, one wonders how John’ own passion for the job has evolved. With only a handful of restaurant jobs in his career, the focus has almost always been on hotels, with all of the different facets – breakfast, lunch, dinner, afternoon tea and private cocktail receptions – that this entails.

“When I came to The Ritz in 2004, my objective was to run the best hotel restaurant and offer the finest hospitality in Great Britain,” he says. “Very early on, I took my cooks into the dining room one day after lunch service. Many of them had never even seen it, but it’s such a special room that for me, it dictates what to cook. I wanted to focus on a 360-degree experience for our guests, including creating a harmonious experience between the room, the service, the food and how we present it. My philosophy has always been to strive for perfection, knowing that you’ll never attain it.”

John has participated in Obsession on two separate occasions – 2017 and 2022 – and says that each experience was interesting and enjoyable. “I have the greatest admiration for Craig and for Lisa,” he says. “When you eat at Obsession, it’s not only about the enjoyment; it’s also the fact that it’s for a brilliant cause, with a percentage of every meal going to Hospitality Action. What makes Obsession so unique is the team: their humanity and friendship. Each night is different, but the common thread is a shared passion and the industry coming together – both chefs and service people – over exceptional food and wine.”