Paul Heathcote MBE Longridge Restaurant Preston

Paul Heathcote MBE runs The Longridge, his flagship restaurant in Preston. He also owns Heathcotes Grill and Bar in Clitheroe and the restaurants Olive Press and Heathcotes Brasserie, both in Preston. He opened the restaurant, then eponymously named, in 1990 at the age of 29. Within two years he had been awarded Michelin and Egon Ronay stars, as well as The Good Food Guide’s ‘Restaurant of the Year’. It won a second Michelin star in 1994, and was renamed Longridge in 2003. His interest in cooking began in his early teens, when he would experiment and add things to the meals his mother would leave his dad and him to reheat. After studying at Bolton Catering College, he worked his way up through a number of restaurants under people such as Francis Coulson and Brian Sack at Sharrow Bay hotel, Michel Bourdin at London’s Connaught hotel and Raymond Blanc at his Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons. Paul has been awarded three Honorary Fellowships from Liverpool John Moores University, Lancashire University & his home town Bolton University in recognition of his achievements in catering. He was also awarded an MBE for his services to the hospitality industry in 2009. So Paul. Phenomenal to meet you. Let's start here at Longridge. 20 years I think you've been here now is that right? 21. 21. Now back in the early days there's a fire and you've got to reopen very, very quickly. It's obviously a major passion of yours how important is it to have good people working for you and having a good team underneath you? We had a fire after 9 days and yes, it was a disaster - you had spent everything, all your savings, opened your dream restaurant and then see it go up in flames - literally. I rallied a lot of people around who had worked for me in the past and we got the place back within 48 hours. It still smelt of smoke mind you. It is obviously important to have good people around you even now. After 21 years in business and 14 before that in kitchens, I want to do things differently. I don't want to be in the kitchen all the time - I don't mind being called in if the chef gives me the call or says can you do the pass tomorrow. I am delighted to do it but I do think you have to have one boss in the place otherwise the rest of the brigade do not know who to look too and if you pick good people who are as passionate as you then you should be able to run the kitchen between you. Let's talk about your other businesses. Where are you involved at the moment? Well we've got Heathcotes Grill and Bar in Clitheroe. We've had the Olive Press in Preston for about 15 or 16 years now and we have just opened Heathcotes Brasserie in Preston on Winckley Square, a mixture of British and French which it was when we did it 15.years ago. We've come out of one of the biggest and worst, whatever term you want to call it, economic downturns over the last two or three years has it been tough trading? Oh yeah it's been a real challenge some of the things we've done I would never have imagined we would have done, you know, discounting just to make sure you've got people coming through the door. We've had to cut staff and things so it's been a real challenge. And do you feel now that we're out of the woods so to speak in terms of the economic climate? Are you starting to see green shoots of recovery? Is business starting to grow for you? You mentioned you're reopening in Preston so is that a sign that you feel we're on the up or are you just taking a big gamble? Well there is a bit of a gamble in it. There's got to be hasn't there? Yeah. I think when we opened"¦I mean I opened in a recession in 1990. I didn't know the recession was coming but it came pretty quickly after opening but I think that we had such a phenomenal rise I suppose within those first four years from 1990 to 94 we won two Michelin stars and we couldn't do anything wrong the reviews we had was why the hell do you open in a place like Longridge in the middle of a recession? Well I didn't know the recession was coming I wasn't that clever and every review was great, every year or every six months we were getting a new award, even small ones. So we rode the recession out in a very different way, we've been 21 years established as you've said. So coming through that recession has been tough and we're still not through it. I think we've another probably another 18 months to go. I think that London is different, tourism helps, the pound stretches a lot further for foreign visitors and London has a lot more to offer in terms of what you can do in the day. So driving out to the Ribble Valley or to Preston is slightly different I think and until the banks start lending we won't be out of the recession. That I think is the difficulty. How's Longridge changed in that 21 years? Longridge is a very different place. People know the Ribble Valley and it's certainly become a place that has more to offer. Absolutely. There's some great places around here isn't there? I was at the Freemasons yesterday and there's some wonderful little"¦ Oh yeah you've got Northcote and the pubs that they own around here. The Inn at White Well was here 20 years ago. Which must be good for the area because it brings people to the area as well doesn't it? Oh yeah we're not short of good eating places, absolutely, and I think it would be very easy just to say that and think actually there's one or two. I think we've got a big clutch of places that are well worth eating at. It's a great area and of course all the produce that we've got in the area, Lancashire cheese has been back in fashion, things like the geese and ducks and chickens from Goosnargh, suckling pigs from Pughs, there's just a whole long list of ingredients here that weren't really around 20 years ago. In that period of time you've obviously seen a lot of food fashions and food trends come and go, you've still got your black pudding on, you've still got your bread and butter pudding on do you think we've kind of gone full cycle now and people are expecting almost food as it says on the tin as opposed to everything being with foam and a hot jelly, or micro herbs on everything? Yeah I think that there is an expectation, I think it has changed. I mean we put black pudding on 92, some19 years ago? Nobody had it on a menu, even Gary Rhodes didn't. I remember I'd been asked to go and cook in France for a load of champagne owners along with Nigel Howarth, and few others. We were asked to put poulet de Bresse, foie gras, caviar, all this kind of stuff on the menu and I'm saying, "What a load of bloody rubbish, why the hell should we go over to France and cook all this when there's a lot of great produce around?" So they said, "So what are you going to do then Heathcote, black pudding?" and I said, "Yeah I'll do black pudding," I went through a lot of old recipes, cooked them all and every single one of them was not good and