Best Pubs in the North West
Published 12 December 2024

Not that Castle. This one is a reconditioned late-Georgian pub in the Ancoats district of Manchester, now part of a regeneration zone that has conjured a modern neighbourhood where once there was industrial wasteland. Generously upholstered banquettes, mirrors and plenty of daylight from big windows are spirit-lifting in themselves, but the cooking lifts the place into another dimension. There is a traditional Sunday lunch offering, but the more speculative contemporary food makes weekdays equally popular with readers. Locally grown purple artichokes are served alla giudia, a Roman Jewish deep-fried treatment that produces a crisply seared surface on a creamy, bittersweet inner texture – not to be missed in their season. When did you last eat a fantail squid? Here they are, hauled in from Brixham and served with new season's peas for textural contrast. For main course, there might be a satisfying fish dish such as hake with pepper dulse and Jersey Royals, while meats offer locally farmed Tamworth pork belly with hispi cabbage or lamb shoulder with broad beans and – of all the things to come upon in Ancoats – nasturtiums. A whopping great pie of Ryeland lamb shank should provide plenty of sustenance for a hungry pair of diners. Seasonal fruits make the dessert list a welcome recourse, whether it be strawberry fool and elderflower cream or Yorkshire rhubarb sorbet with a brandy-snap.

* On Mondays and Tuesdays, the pub serves a reduced menu for residents only.*

* Gareth Webster has left and been replaced by Paul McKinnon, who was the pub's original chef when it opened in 2008. Watch for a new review coming soon.*

'Welcome back,' announces a board outside Charles Lowther's cream-fronted country-estate pub with rooms, signalling that the George & Dragon has finally recovered from the effects of a devastating fire in June 2022. Inside, tranquillity reigns, despite the presence of a mural depicting a haloed St George seeing off that dragon. Much of the produce comes from the Lowther Hall estate and kitchen gardens, giving a palpable sense of a community resource, and the place has another valuable asset in the shape of chef Gareth Webster, who worked previously in one of Simon Rogan's kitchens. The menu format is accessible and full of interest, depending on whether you want to eat lightly or pile right in. Small plates such as smoked sea trout, venison pastrami or delicious little lobster tacos with sweetcorn and a light salsa make an inspired intro, before pedigree meats and traditional seafood dishes take the stage. The fully laden fish pie is topped with Cheddar mash, while vegetarian mains might feature charred cauliflower steak with almond pesto, although the heart of the operation is revealed in a substantial serving of saddleback pork, topped with black pudding and crackling, accompanied by lightly blanched chard, roasted beetroot and an all-important jug of glossy gravy. Tarts and crumbles are the mainstays of the desserts: we enjoyed a fig tatin with sour apple chutney, thyme honey and a wedge of Blue Whinnow (a delicately veined cow's-milk cheese from Thornby Moor Dairy near Carlisle). An enterprising, fairly priced wine list has informative notes, with prominence given to bottles from artisanal, family-run estates.

Famed locally for its food and drink, the Parkers Arms sits on a stretch of the B6478 as it unwinds across the Trough of Bowland, not far from the river Hodder. Locations don't get much more rural than this, and it's all the more gladdening to find the interior hasn't been suffocatingly boutiqued. 

In 2021, The Hairy Bikers stopped in here, and helped turn the curried mutton pie into a viral sensation, and it remains true that the pies are a powerful part of the draw – majestic constructions of exemplary pastry, crusts crimped, the glaze shining them up like burnished armour, the insides generously filled with good things.  Otherwise, fish from Morecambe Bay is worth considering, perhaps roasted sea bass with foraged samphire and Ormskirk potatoes. Start with a single whopping hand-dived Hebridean scallop in a butter of its own roe and garlic, or salt cod fritters in lemon mayo, and close the deal with cherry frangipane tart and matching ice cream.

Simple lunches for intrepid walkers offer sanctuary from the Lancashire rain-pelt. The Bowland brewery's ales are a mainstay of the drink offer,  while wines are an accessibly priced classic selection.

*Chef Nina Matsunaga has launched a new restaurant concept, Tsuchi, at The Black Bull. Look out for a new review coming soon.*

Geographically, Sedbergh is part of the Yorkshire Dales, although it sits on the edge of the Lake District. Something of that dual identity informs the layout of this revamped coaching inn, which accommodates two very different spaces with two very different personalities. To the left as you go in is the cosy, convivial pub room – our preferred spot – complete with a bar, equine paraphernalia, dried flower displays, bright red banquettes and fairy lights strung around the walls. Here you can sup local ales and get welcome sustenance from platters of home-cooked ham and artisan cheese, hot Herdwick lamb sandwiches, maple pea houmous or Mansergh Hall pork and kimchi stew.

To the right are the dining areas, the first being a dog-friendly antechamber, the second a sparser, more formal split-level affair. The menu highlights local produce but there’s a noticeable Asian bent to the more ambitious dishes: expect Howgill Hereford beef pie with seasonal greens alongside crispy Korean beef wrapped in a shiso leaf or pork belly in XO sauce with alliums. To finish, there might be an 'extremely savoury’ black-sesame panna cotta with basil oil and shards of sesame cracker. On Sundays, prime meat sourced from local herds is the kitchen's USP, accompanied by sides including treacle carrots.

Service is well-meaning, although it seems better suited to the pub side of things than the restaurant. However, the Black Bull’s drinks offer gets full marks, from unusually pleasing ‘softs’ including Zingi Bear (an organic ginger switchel) to fascinating sips from Slovakia, Slovenia and Serbia on the diverse, good-value wine list. A new outdoor bar and kitchen facility should add to the Black Bull's all-round appeal.

It may only be a few miles from the brash lights of Blackpool but this remodelled 17th-century coaching inn beside the tidal river Wyre is light years away in style and atmosphere. There are tranquil views of the Fylde plain across to the Bowland Fells, and restaurant tables overlooking the river are always at a premium – although there is much more to engage both eye and palate here.

To the rear, a small garden-courtyard, edged by a deli, gallery and jewellery shop, is festooned with painted bird houses, trees strung with coloured streamers and sequinned bunting. Inside, the decor is not so much quirky as idiosyncratic, with an eclectic collection of art and craftwork brightening up the bar and dining areas. It might not be to everyone’s taste but it’s fun and engaging.

On the whole, the food matches the setting, with a good selection of seasonal dishes served at wooden tables decorated with whimsical hand-blown glass mushrooms. The menu has serious French aspirations, and there's an emphasis on big, bold meat and game specialities such as local wood pigeon saltimbocca, braised pig's cheek tacos and grilled, stuffed lamb’s heart. Prissy it ain’t. The Gallic blow-out entitled 'premeditated gluttony’ needs to be ordered 48 hours in advance and features a ‘grands fruits de mer’ platter that has been described as ‘the best we have had anywhere in Britain or France.’

Concepts are contemporary but avoid falling down too many ‘creative’ rabbit holes – although on our latest visit it was the small things that let the side down (salty and oily potted hot-smoked trout, for example). Our daily fish special, however, was memorable: line-caught wild sea bass from Morecambe Bay, served with vegetables from the garden and a delicate lemony sauce. For afters, the choice might include banana parfait choc ice with hazelnut praline and goat's milk caramel or a ‘croissant’ bread and butter pudding embellished with roasted peach, while the enterprising wine list is noted for its global spread, fair mark-ups and by-the-glass selection.  

The Dog & Gun takes centre stage in the tranquil north Cumbrian village of Skelton. As befits its name, the place will welcome your canine companion (if you give notice), but perhaps leave the firearms at home. It's a welcoming dining space, divided by a central bar, with misshapen ceiling beams and wheelback chairs, and an approach to service considerate enough to turn down the Ed Sheeran when orders are being taken. Ben Queen-Fryer works in splendid isolation at the stoves, offering a style of high-gloss country cooking that puts the emphasis on substance as well as impressive technique. Pasta is spot-on, as in a yolk-yellow raviolo filled with pork, sauced with a reduction of the poaching milk with sage and garlic. A terrine of smoked Jersey Royals, or perhaps a cheesy soufflé, might be alternative starters, but do save room for the trencher-style main dishes – witness a stonking venison suet pudding packed with tender, gamey meat, served with a stick of beetroot done in duck fat, mead gravy and a side of the chunkiest chips. Dover sole is butter-sauced, while the veg option might be earthy cep risotto. Even the crumbly-topped dessert soufflé, made with the Lyth Valley's celebrated damsons and partnered with frangipane ice cream, is a hefty proposition – so that diners not opting for the chocolate millefeuille need not feel skimped. A couple of Cumbrian craft beers and sanely priced wines by the glass lead the drinks offering, with selections forsaking the beaten track for Swiss varietals, Slovak Riesling and an orange creation from Alsace.

Ambleside is well served by the Drunken Duck. It is not one of those pubs that has left its drinking side behind (not with that name); instead, it throws a welcoming arm around locals in an atmosphere of free-and-easy conviviality. That said, an appreciable attempt has been made to give the dining area its own identity with some framed art prints of flowers, a festooning of dried hops, and an open-to-view kitchen. Last booking for food is 8pm.

Staff are expertly clued-up, not least with knowledge of the Barngates beers brewed on site. The food is distinguished by nutritious heartiness, seen to impressive effect in a vegetarian main course of roasted cabbage and mushrooms topped with capers and horseradish, served with potato cakes, which might be preceded by a fricassée of Jerusalem artichokes with apple, black garlic and sunflower seeds.

Homely main dishes make great cold-weather sustenance, even when the cold weather comes round in late June: a bowl of fortifying marjoram-scented rabbit stew arrives with chunky veg, potent gravy and a cloud of lovely mash. Sides of perfectly textured chips and aïoli will help fill any holes.

In the context, the afters seem pleasantly light: yoghurt mousse and rhubarb sorbet team up for a refreshing finish, under a summery dusting of dried raspberries, or there may be a raspberry and fig version of Bakewell pudding. Gluggable wines by the glass head up a no-nonsense list.

As befits a constituent part of the Duchy of Lancaster Estate, this grand old inn is a suitably substantial prospect. It has also been refreshing weary travellers since the 18th century, so you are in experienced hands. These days, a sensitive touch with modernisation has produced a dining room that looks over the kitchen garden and the meandering river Hodder. Jamie Cadman is comfortably into his third decade at the stoves, overseeing menus of modern pub food that deliver plenty of flavour, with generous helpings of Lancastrian ingredients underpinning the repertoire – from moorland game and beef reared on nearby Burholme Farm to smoked salmon cured over oak and alder chippings by Giles, the local fishmonger. To start, black pudding is a regular contender, perhaps added to a ham hock terrine or served as a warm salad with smoked bacon, chorizo and salsa verde. As a main course, the Whitewell fish pie is a majestic assemblage of poached haddock and prawns, flashed under the grill to bubble up its Cheddar topping, while slow-roast local lamb might turn up in Gallic garb alongside roast garlic mash, braised lentils, fine beans and pancetta. The day's desserts tend to be old dependables along the lines of treacle tart, sticky toffee pudding and millonaire's shortbread. Imbibers will be pleased to learn that the inn is also renowned for its ambitious wine list, which is arranged by style and accompanied by genuinely helpful tasting notes; the by-the-glass selection is rounded out with a small spread of French poshos from the Coravin.

A serene village in the verdant Lyth Valley, complete with a pretty church and rolling hills, is home to this upmarket hostelry. Originally a blacksmith's forge at the beginning of the 19th century, its old bones make for a magnificent country inn, where beams and slates, real fires and real ales feel right at home across several spaces. It's been a dining destination for several decades and continues to deliver a menu that keeps its feet firmly on the ground, with produce from the owners' farm ensuring that food miles are kept to a minimum.

Lancashire cheese soufflé with caramelised red onions is a cross-border favourite, comforting and rich, or you could try a lighter option such as beetroot and pomegranate salad with goat's cheese and raspberry vinaigrette. Cumbrian lamb arrives with a miniature shepherd's pie, while fish might feature pan-roasted cod with cider and mussel sauce, plus a serving of mash to soak it all up.

During the week, lunchtime brings similar dishes, with the addition of pub staples such as fish and chips or local wild boar and damson sausages (with mash and gravy). Those damsons also appear as a sorbet with the Punch Bowl's renowned lemon tart. Sunday lunch (a weekly changing blow-out) brings roast beef sirloin with Yorkies and seasonal vegetables (some courtesy of the owner's farm). Well-chosen wines from £27.

In the relatively short time since the Rum Fox opened, its owners have 'immersed themselves in village life' and the place has become a much-appreciated local asset. Nestled in the lovely village of Grindleton in the Ribble Valley, against a backdrop of rolling Lancashire hills, this splendid double-fronted pub has been stylishly renovated and is now in fine fettle. You can eat in the traditional beamed bar area (presided over by the antique, red-coated M Reynard himself) or in a spacious, light-filled open-plan contemporary room with its flagged floors, solid ceramic tables, contemporary stoneware and open kitchen. Service from a band of genuinely lovely staff is confident and enthusiastic.

A good-value set menu culls dishes from the carte, perhaps taking them down a notch or so in terms of refinement – although you never feel short-changed. Our summer menu included a glossy pea, lettuce and mint soup served with one of the kitchen's now-legendary stuffed potato skins, followed by cod loin with salt-and-pepper Jersey Royals and chilli crab sauce (quality fish but over-spiced for our taste). For afters, never mind the weather, it has to be exemplary sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream.

The kitchen's seasonal endeavours have a kind of muscular style and ambition, although it's all very controlled and the chef knows his market – hence popular pies and suet puddings such as chicken and chorizo or ox cheek, onion and mushroom, not forgetting apple and rhubarb crumble to finish. There might also be a riff on venison – perhaps haunch, shoulder and cottage pie with artichoke, wild garlic and rowanberry sauce. Wines and beers do their job admirably.

About three miles outside Clitheroe, Mitton is hewn in two by the river Ribble, with the Three Fishes on the side to the north, properly glorified as Great Mitton. The pub itself can hardly be missed, sitting as it does on a junction in its coat of brilliant white. Nigel Haworth, king of Lancastrian cuisine, has taken the place a little further upmarket from its initial incarnation, but the vibe is ‘neither stuffy nor formal’, according to one local, with helpful and knowledgeable staff ensuring that everything runs without a hitch.

Local suppliers are front and centre on the menu, hardly more so than the pub's own kitchen garden, which you are welcome to explore. Readers' feedback emphasises the attention to detail that lifts a dish such as teriyaki scallops with sublime jalapeño-spiked tartare sauce out of the ordinary; likewise, popping-fresh broad beans add the final flourish to a summer risotto topped with samphire, pea purée and parsley pesto. Loin of venison benefits from slow cooking and a deeply flavoured ragoût, with a wedge of hispi cabbage and mushroom ketchup to carry it, while sea bass is crisp-skinned and delectable, perfectly served by tempura spring onion and dill butter.

To finish, a whimberry pie seemed 'a little cheffy' to one recipient (all feathery delicacy) but damson soufflé was ‘simply outstanding’, packed with deep, ripe flavour and beautifully risen. There's a traditional ‘chippy tea’ on Fridays (6-7pm), and Lancashire-style Sunday roasts are abidingly popular. Drinkers sup real ales in the flagstoned bar, while the wine list offers a decent spread tilted towards the Old World.

Having conquered the populist bistro scene in the north-west, serial crowd-funding restaurateur Gary Usher turned his hand to the pub sector in 2023. The result was the White Horse – a pleasingly spacious and sensitively renovated old hostelry in a pretty village near Chester.  Soft colours, vibrant food paintings and glittering light fittings set the tone, with a big conservatory opening out onto the garden.

The menu is short but suits all-comers: a solo lunch of whitebait, steak frites and panna cotta hit the bullseye for one diner, while others have raved about the Korean chicken wings with pickled ginger, the melting pulled lamb shoulder, an ‘incredible’ dish of John Dory in tarragon beurre blanc and the mighty handmade cheese and onion pie. Usher’s legendary truffle and Parmesan chips are present and correct, while puddings are of the hearty, calorific variety (unless you prefer a triple chocolate brownie). And it’s all served by absolutely charming staff who know how to look after their regulars but welcome everybody with a smile. 

Weekday two-course deals are a steal at £25, and Sunday lunches receive a round of applause – as does the terrific line-up of beers. Cocktails and fairly priced wines also pass muster. Regular community-based events, a prolific guest chef calendar and a bakery pop-up on Saturday mornings 'help to keep things fresh,’ notes one fan.

There isn't a great deal to Fence, which once lay within Pendle Forest and was surrendered to its tenants by Henry VII. Some of the alleged Pendle witches were tried here in the 17th century, before wiser counsels prevailed. These days, all the running is made by the transformation of a village pub, the White Swan, into one of Lancashire's destination dining venues.

The interior with its burnished wood bar counter still looks the part, but nobody pops in for an evening pint and a game of darts. Instead, the cooking of the prodigiously talented Tom Parker is front and centre, now offered in the format of a multi-course ‘menu surprise’, moving through a parade of dishes that look disarmingly simple, but demonstrate the gastronomic equivalent of perfect pitch. Expect challenges and surprises all the way, from organic salmon with wasabi buttermilk, yuzu and dill to Périgord truffle ice cream. 

An autumnal dinner opened with a small croustade of rich chicken liver mousse, before bread arrived – a mini-loaf for sharing, served with goat's curd and basil oil, as well as butter. To follow, a ‘study in tomato’ produced a trio of sweet-sour cherry tomatoes in intense tomato consommé, prior to a version of beef tartare made with pedigree Dexter, lit up with a great slug of horseradish. For main course, there was fillet of fallow deer, cooked pinkish, with a bonbon of stickily braised meat, a bouquet of mushrooms and Jerusalem artichoke purée, the whole supported by a damson-based game sauce of miraculous potency.

A pre-dessert of pear in honey and verjus heralded the finishing flourish, a kind of savarin liberally soaked in Pedro Ximénez sherry, topped with orange miso cream. You can also add on a plate of cheeses from the Courtyard Dairy in Austwick, served with truffle honey. The White Swan is justly proud to be ‘the only pub in Lancashire’ serving Timothy Taylor's Yorkshire-brewed ales, and it also boasts a smart list of well-chosen wines.