Michelin-starred The Cottage In The Wood is coming to Manchester

Jack and Beth Bond first locked eyes over a hot stove in the clamour of London’s fine dining scene, while working for one or two people you may have heard of – multi-Michelin chefs Marcus Wareing, Gordon Ramsay and Claridge’s among them.

Since then, life has changed quite profoundly. Now they can step outside their front door and find inspiration in the forest that surrounds their Michelin-starred restaurant-with-rooms, The Cottage In The Wood, which will arrive in Manchester for one night only later this month, via our new supper club series Out of Towners.

The Cottage In The Wood sits in the picturebook Whinlatter Forest, near Keswick, in a packhorse inn which dates back to the 1600s. Its water comes from a spring that runs down the hill, and the nearby Whinlatter Pass becomes impassable in bad weather. A few years ago, it was closed due to loose badgers whose setts had collapsed.

So yes, a very different life indeed. Not many loose badgers in Central London. Though cooking and service has remained the constant for them both.

After marrying in the Lakes, instead of a honeymoon they decided to take a break from London and work for a while in Cumbria instead, for renowned boutique hotel Another Place on Ullswater and the Michelin-starred Source at The Gilpin hotel.

The Cottage In The Wood has held its own star since 2018, first under previous head chef Ben Wilkinson, and it’s been retained since Jack and Beth took over the reigns last year.

Beth says that a second would be nice, but they’re particularly focused on being recognised for their sustainability with the recently established Michelin green star. This ethos has been recently exposed to the nation, with Jack appearing on the latest series of The Great British Menu, impressing chef and judge Paul Ainsworth with dishes that lean strongly towards the sustainable.

Experience during a job-swap – organised by Marcus Wareing – at Eleven Madison Park in New York (at the time regarded as the best restaurant in the world) completely changed Jack’s view on how hospitality should work, with front–of-house and the kitchen working in seamless harmony.

The move to Cumbria, a county with 15 Michelin stars, has also opened new doors, and not a little nostalgia for Jack, who spent a chunk of his childhood there. Herdwick hogget roam the nearby fells, and the nearby woodland provides an open-air larder for fungi and foraging.

Fresh fish arrives from the west coast harbours, and there’s grass-fed beef from North Yorkshire.

A combination of superb service and Michelin star cooking – doubtless with a few exceptional ingredients from the forest coming down the M6 – is what we can look forward to in Manchester, when The Cottage In The Wood arrives for one night only at TNQ, the revered Northern Quarter bistro that has been feeding the city for more than 20 years, and a stalwart of the Manchester dining scene.

The menu will boast cured trout with horseradish and XO sauce, homemade potato bread and cultured butter, beef with celeriac and wild garlic and a dish of pumpkin, smoked almond and rhubarb. Rhubarb will feature in the puddings with King’s ginger and bee pollen, as well as ‘chocolate’ with sweet, raisin-heavy Pedro Ximénez sherry.

World class wines will come from Tuscany, Puglia and the Maipo Valley in Chile – all from the Antinori family, which has been producing wine for six centuries and 36 generations, and exporting it for 400 years, making it one of the oldest wine-making dynasties in the world.

A limited number of tickets for this one-off supper club will transport you to Jack and Beth’s The Cottage In The Wood for the evening, the first in a series of events run by Manchester’s Finest that we’re calling Out of Towners, which will bring some of the best restaurants and chefs in the country to both long-established and innovative spaces all around the city.