‘It does feel a bit more like my kitchen now, but I think it’s business as usual for the most part!’ says Lisa, as we chat on the phone. I’ve caught her just before lunch service at Northcote, as evidenced by the busy chatter of prep work in the background. ‘I was doing a lot of the food development and the menus anyway,’ she continues, ‘but now I have a lot more responsibility.’
Late last year, Nigel Haworth decided to step away from the kitchen at Northcote for good, leaving his role as chef-patron to become an ambassador for the Northcote Group. He will continue to be involved with Obsession – Northcote’s annual food festival – but he will no longer be involved in the kitchen or day-to-day running of the business. It’s the first time Nigel has not been at the helm of Northcote since he became head chef at the restaurant in 1984, but in Lisa Goodwin-Allen, he has a protégé that has blossomed into one of the best chefs in Britain.
Lisa joined Northcote in 2001, after brief stints at Holbeck Ghyll in Cumbria and with David Everitt-Matthias at Le Champignon Sauvage in Gloucestershire. As a twenty-year-old demi chef de partie, she had no idea that the country manor would become her home for the next seventeen-plus years. ‘To be honest, I was going to come and work here for a year,’ she says. ‘Like every young person I wanted to travel and see other things, but when I got here, there were so many opportunities and doors that kept opening. I’m a very hungry and ambitious person, and I like to see myself achieving as well as the people around me. Every time I achieved something at Northcote, there was something else there to reach for.’