Its Asian-influenced menu has put the Lancashire pub on the foodie map, including a big win in the AA’s 2017 Hospitality Awards. But its owner says it’s still just a local for the villagers
When is a pub not a pub? Probably when, as the Freemasons in Lancashire has just done, it wins the AA English restaurant of the year award. True, like Kent’s Michelin-starred Sportsman or Tom Kerridge’s two-star Hand & Flowers, this rural inn near Blackburn may serve real ales and runs “chippy tea” nights (three-courses, £26). But sitting upstairs in its Georgian-styled dining rooms, eating artfully arranged plates of local grouse – served with yakitori livers, sweetcorn, foraged mushrooms and blueberry hoisin sauce (£32) – this is, self-evidently, no boozer.
Not that chef-owner Steven Smith will readily relinquish his pub status: “The food’s far removed from pub food, but it’s a village pub. We embrace that.” Downstairs, in the genteel-rustic, flagstone-floored bar and dining room, he says: “My Thursday regulars come in and have chips and mayonnaise at the bar and a good drink. Sunday nights, there could be 30 locals in.”
Continue reading...