Our Food
Our passion lies in finding quality ingredients and preparing, cooking and presenting them in a modern but unpretentious way.
Our menus have a spine of fresh, seasonal, classic British dishes complemented by more exotic influences from other parts of the world. Each pubs menu is different and is uploaded to their website each morning before 12 noon so that you may peruse them at your leisure to whet your appetite.
Each of our pubs offer a wide range of gluten free dishes. Most of our sauces, gravies and dressings have been gluten free for many years. But we have been working with Coeliac UK in order to develop recipes for pastries, flapjacks, shortbreads and the like in order to offer more and more gluten free options.
We adopted Coeliac UK’s training for all of our Managers and Head Chefs along with our already robust training in order to give our teams the knowledge and confidence in this area and we are thrilled to have been awarded Coeliac UK’s accreditation.
Simply look out for two symbols next to dishes on our Daily Menu; gf – gluten free and gfa – which denotes a dish that could easily be adapted to make it gluten free if you ask your server.
September 2026
Exec Chef Dave's junior chefs went out for a trip, sea fishing with Tara from Neves of Fleetwood.
The weather was set fair in the morning with cracking blue skies, which turned a tad choppy later in the day, but that didn’t dampen the mood and everyone had a fantastic day.
The day was a great success with many of the lads catching fish. Fantastic to catch some of the types of fish that they might be serving from their kitchens.
Every year we run a competition across all of our pubs to crown creators of the best dishes. Each pub enters a junior chef and front of house partnership to represent them in our company wide competition to develop and reward our rising stars.
At the grand finals in September the teams of two are challenged with two rounds. The first stage begins with a tray of identical ingredients and an unseen spec for each team, this year we opted for venison loin with plum tatin, pickled blackberries and Stilton cream. They have 1 hour to prep, cook and present the dish following the spec precisely. In true ‘Great British Bake Off’ style each team places their finished starter behind a card with their name, leaving our panel of judges, Tom, Mary and Mike to compare, contrast and then pick the top three.
The idea of this task is to show that consistency, accuracy and replication need to be cornerstones of our food offer.
The second task gives each team free range to choose from an amazing larder of ingredients: guinea fowls, rabbits, pork and venison loins, lobsters, whole fish, racks of lamb (too many things to mention).
Each team has 3 hours to devise a main course and a pudding using their imagination and creativity. The challenge we set the teams was around simplicity of style, idea and presentation whilst keeping the dishes tasty and a good fit for our pubs and this ultimately decided our top three.
It’s fair to say that the 2026 finals brought with it a consistently high standard of cooking. It was especially pleasing to see how all the team’s balanced originality and innovation whilst keeping in mind our overall food style.
Interestingly, none of the teams chose any fish or shellfish from the array on show. Equally interesting in 20 odd years of running our junior chef competition we have never had a chicken ballotine dish, and this year we ended up with two in the finals, one ending up in the top three.
All top three teams scored very highly in the first round replicating the venison loin starter. In the afternoon the Black Jug’s team of Joe and Matt’s super simple but perfectly cooked, seasoned and plated lamb main course, finished off with a play on lemon meringue took the overall first place on the day.
Following closely on the heels of the Black Jug and special mentions for team Mute Swan Dan and Sebastian’s chicken ballotine that was cooked beautifully and was sharp on the plate. And equally high praise for the Leather Bottle’s Max and Max’s pudding (clearly Mary, Tom and Mike like a lemon meringue dessert) as the homemade tart’s pastry was baked to perfection and combined with all the loveliness and clear flavours that make this dessert a classic.
All the finalists win a prize for their efforts and the winners are taken on a fantastic culinary experience, this year at the fabulous and Michelin starred Frog by Adam Handling.
We owe Cheshire South & West College huge thanks for hosting us fantastically well at their Ellesmere Port Campus and Royal Greenland for their kind sponsorship and our many suppliers for the wonderful, fresh ingredients.
