Menuwatch: Coach & Horses, Clitheroe
Diners come to this coaching inn for escapism and a taste of Lancashire seasonality. Louise Rhind-Tutt reports
In the heart of the Ribble Valley, the Grade II-listed Coach & Horses had been closed for three years when husband and wife team Ko Labeij and Susan Lord picked up the keys. They spent nine months renovating it, creating seven rooms, a new kitchen, restaurant, bar and beer garden, which opened in 2017.
With head chef Ian Moss at the helm, whose CV includes Northcote, the Ledbury, the Goring and the Harwood Arms, the traditional coaching inn, with its own microbrewery, has two AA rosettes to its name and serves several menus, including a tasting menu, an à la carte, a Sunday lunch and a casual sandwich menu, using local ingredients where possible.
"With our tasting menu, I've really focused on elevating each dish and taking it to the next level," says Moss. "It's about making the most of seasonal produce as soon as it becomes available and celebrating it at its best. While we're using seasonal ingredients, with the likes of Skrei cod and cull yow shoulder, we've also created dishes that aren't commonplace, to give people the chance to try something different from the norm."
The tasting menu starts with a selection of canapés: pani puri are stuffed with caramelised onion, Lancashire cheese custard and a homemade brown sauce, while crisp squid ink rice crackers come with house-smoked trout ("we hot-smoke the sides of trout over hay," says Moss) and a zingy lemon gel. A chicken liver parfait is made silky smooth with a Pacojet: "We freeze it, blend it, and then freeze and blend again, at least three times, to get it so smooth". Then an amuse bouche of butternut squash and ginger soup awakens the palate for the first course.
For the guinea fowl terrine with Madeira jelly, date and mushroom, Moss uses the whole bird. "We confit the legs and brine, then poach the breasts, then layer the terrine so there's the leg at the bottom, then the mushrooms, which we sauté and mix with tarragon, then there's the sliced breast. Then we repeat the process."
The Madeira jelly is made using "a double Guinea fowl stock. We make it using half the bones, pass the sauce off then put that stock over the next half of the bones to intensify the flavour, and then add reduced Madeira. It's a long process, but it's worth it".
Skrei cod is served with pan-fried gnocchi, crisp pancetta, onions poached in cider and a hollandaise made using "half butter and half lobster butter," topped with Salty Fingers, a type of sea vegetable, for colour and texture.
"Cull yow is a seasonal product we came across last year through our butcher," says Moss. "It's a sheep that's three to five years old and the flavour is amazing. We braise the whole shoulder, bone-in, for about three hours, then ballotine it and set it. It's then pan-fried and glazed in a sauce made from the liquor." It's served with a crisp potato terrine, local carrots cooked in a butter emulsion and baby leeks finished on the chargrill.
A passion fruit and white chocolate cheesecake is mascarpone-based – "there's no sugar in it because the white chocolate is sweet enough" – served with a homemade coconut and lime sorbet.
The final dessert is an almond praline parfait. "It's kind of like an ice-cream sandwich. We do three layers of filo pastry with butter and icing sugar, and then it's in the oven for eight minutes to go nice and crisp." Moss makes an almond praline, "which gets folded through a meringue mix of egg whites and sugar, and folded with a mix of double and whipping cream before being set in the freezer", and served with apples caramelised with sugar and crème patissière on top.
The tasting menu changes around four times a year, says Moss, but inspiration is seasonal. "We're blessed round here with a lot of game, so game season is big for us. And our fishmonger texts me daily to say what's in."
Many diners become regulars, he says. "People might only be driving 40 minutes to get here, but they say it feels like a million miles away. It's a nice place to recharge." And some customers are hooked straight away. "We had a couple come in a few weeks ago. They'd been out for a walk, came in and had a sandwich for lunch. Then they booked straight away for the £75 Valentine's Day tasting menu, with a room." You can't get better feedback than that.
From the menu
Canapés
- Caramelised onion, cheese custard, pani puri
- House-smoked trout, rice cracker, lemon gel
- Chicken liver parfait cornet
Amuse bouche butternut squash and ginger soup
Guinea fowl terrine, madeira jelly, date, mushroom
Skrei cod, gnocchi, bacon, onion, hollandaise
Cull yow shoulder, potato terrine, baby leek, carrot, jus
Passion fruit and white chocolate cheesecake, coconut and lime sorbet
Almond praline parfait, filo, caramelised apple
Tasting menu, £65 per head; wine flight, £35 per head
The Coach & Horses, Main Street, Bolton-by-Bowland, Clitheroe BB7 4NW
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