Knockin’ About at an award-winning hotel

EATING out is, without doubt, one of life’s great pleasures, so when an invitation to lunch at the Clough Manor dropped on my desk I was eager to re-arrange my diary and devote myself to fine dining.

And so I found myself at the renovated Denshaw hotel, in the company of owners Alan and Carmel Tupman for a celebration.

For Clough Manor has been named Best Newcomer in the prestigious Lancashire Life awards and last night at the City of Manchester Stadium in Eastlands, the proprietors were joined by their daughter Chantelle, the hotel’s executive director, and executive chef Nigel Skinkiss to receive the accolade at a glittering dinner.

Recruited from the Hey Green Hotel in Marsden, Nigel — who is also a director of the business — has certainly played a pivotal role in transforming the fortunes of what was once the fading La Pergola.

To celebrate the Lancashire Life award, lunch for 63 was served in the Friarmere Suite after canapes and Cava Brut on the terrace. The Rabetllat I Vidal Cava was a special vintage, matured in Barcelona for 12 months instead of the normal nine in order to achieve the sharpness normally associated with the finest of Champagnes.

I know this because I was sat next to Dominic, from C and O Wines in Timperley, and he explained why each of the wines was specifically chosen to complement each course. And so it came to pass that we tasted a Panilonco Reserve Chardonnay Vioger with our hot smoked salmon and potato salad.

The Malbec, which Dominic described as an Argentinian Merlot, sat rather well with an excellent roast rib of pork served with koffmans cabbage, fondant potato and black pudding ravioli.

I will make a confession at this point: I have never, in all my life, eaten as much as a morsel of black pudding. And I still haven’t.

Sorry, Nige, you may be a top, top chef, and I had a top, top time, but eating black pudding, like consuming haggis, smoking and parking in disabled bays, ought to be punishable by deportation to Somalia.

The blackberry and liquorice delice, that’s a sweet, by the way, was exemplary.

The whole experience was reviewed by Roger Borrell, the editor of Lancashire Life, and his cookery editor, Philippa James, who spoke glowingly of the hotel and the food and wine choices.

Given that the hotel has not advertised in the magazines for some time, the award is all the more worthy.

Of course, my small part in this triumph went unremarked upon, but it was 40 years ago that I waited table in the then Cherry Clough, for the Clough Manor is one and the same, and there was little chance back in the late 1960s that chef Alex Rice would have got away with offering black pudding ravioli.

How times have moved on. Good for Oldham — we now have two award-winning hostelries in the borough.