Higher Ground
‘But what even is British food?!’, I put to Joe as he rolls pasta ahead of service. He’s worried that some people will criticise putting tagliatelle on the menu of a place that describes itself as a British bistro. Perhaps some will, but they’d be missing the point entirely. This isn’t a restaurant that’s looking backwards to the classics for inspiration. The direction is very much forwards, onwards—to the future of what food in this country can be.
And what an exciting prospect that is. I relish the thought of eating copious amounts of whatever comes out of the Higher Ground kitchen from hereon in. It’s one of those places where you really do want to order everything, the oft-changing nature of the menu inducing a mild panic that there’s hit after hit that you inevitably miss out on.
Unsurprisingly, the produce is centre-stage, not just in the way dishes are listed (‘Red Russian kale, whipped Cumbrian goats curd, ox heart’), but how they’re actually made. Because we’re so used to being able to access whatever food we want at any time of the year, allowing the produce to dictate the menu, in the wrong hands, might feel restrictive. But this menu is varied and surprising, less formulaic and more fun than most—no one was expecting the humble cheddar tart, not least next to the luxury of Cornish brown crab pappardelle. Concise but impactful, it manages to be hyper-local (veg from their own Cinderwood Market Garden in Cheshire), whilst also taking us on a journey around the British Isles (Cornish brill, Colchester oysters, charcuterie from Brighton-based Curing Rebels), with clear European influences (‘Pig head terrine, garlic capers’). It’s a menu that expresses Joe’s restless curiosity and commitment to sourcing the very best, and then cooking it with skill, integrity and creativity.
This variety also makes it accessible—anything from a snack to a feast can be accommodated here. And true to what’s become the team’s signature style, they’ve kept it relaxed. The food feels refined but never fussy, the simplicity and beauty of plates such as the ‘celeriac, salted blackcurrants and bay leaf’ sitting comfortably alongside hearty chowder, or pea fritters draped with a generous grating of cheddar. There are no obscure ingredients or mad techniques to bamboozle, the wizardry of the kitchen tempered, as always, by relatability. As Joe says: ‘I like pasta, you like pasta, it’s what we all want to eat’.
Cramming your whole ethos into a list of crowd-pleasers is the real success of this menu. It’s no surprise that the dishes everyone’s going wild for are the simplest—the bread! The mash! Getting the basics bang on is the most promising, reassuring thing a restaurant can do. But here (where no such reassurances about the cooking are needed), they’re present not as filler or to comfort less adventurous eaters, but to excite, and provoke curiosity. They make you ask, how is this so tasty. It’s not a rhetorical question. Suddenly we’re contemplating food provenance and we’ve only just sat down and ripped into our wholewheat (!) rolls.
And then the pork arrives. Sourced from pigs roaming the forests of Jane Oglesby’s regenerative, pasture-led livestock farm, it’s probably the most important item on the menu at the moment because it perfectly encapsulates everything Higher Ground is about. It tastes of the nuttiness of the acorns the pigs have been munching on all winter and is, in a few mouthfuls, an education in what good food can and should be. The rather Dickensian-sounding ‘grain and mushroom porridge’, which feels like a statement in itself—let me show you how good this is—could stand alone as a dish. But to the pork it adds a complementary earthiness, as well as a reminder of the natural environment that’s so inextricably connected to the meat.
To be able to taste the difference in how an animal is reared is something you can’t really come back from. Food is powerful and these moments stick with you long after the taste has gone. So credit to Jane for her work in this field, as well as to Joe and the team for bringing it to the masses, and instigating that thought that turns into a conversation that turns into a movement working towards better food.
Higher Ground is all about movement. From the music to the wine menu (‘we call it a one-pager. It should hit you like “boom”’) everything is fast-paced and fluid. Nowhere is this more clear than the pass, which doesn’t really exist at all, in the traditional sense. While open kitchens are nothing new, here the room is the kitchen. The high-top seating encircling it is a pretty permeable barrier, with the whole team constantly nipping between the kitchen and floor with ease.
I’m told it was designed this way to maximise efficiency: communication and agility are key to keeping things jostling along at a smooth but heady pace and turn a healthy number of covers. This is essential when you’re buying the most expensive ingredients but keeping the price point as low as possible. For the guest it makes the space feel more open and approachable. It reinforces the easy-breezy vibe they’re going for, and has the nicely democratising effect of making every table feel like the chef’s table.
It’s also such an interesting and obviously very deliberate decision to break away from the liminal space that the pass usually represents—an often tense but exciting frontier between boh and foh, team and guest, process and presentation. Leaving no room for artifice is an act of bold transparency that says they’re proud of what they’re doing and want to share every bit of it with us.
It also means that collaboration is literally built into the design of the space, the removal of physical barriers encouraging ease of movement as well as better facilitating interactions between the team, allowing them to work synergistically. This is nicely mirrored by the way they move between Higher Ground and Flawd—Chris, Richard, Daniel, Meg, George and Phoebe all currently work across both sites, with the aim being that soon everyone will be trained to do so. This interchangeability is a necessity with a small team, but it takes a strong one, working well together, to make it seamless.
Their trust in one another is evident everywhere. Joe and long-time fellow chef Chris are joined by a young and enthusiastic lineup in the kitchen (Will’s first ever service was the launch night. Baptism of fire!). This was a very deliberate decision from Joe— hiring staff that would develop with the restaurant—and beyond the theatre of the coal oven and whole animal butchery, it’s nice to see him interacting with, and teaching, his team.
A phrase I keep hearing from everyone the day I visit is that ‘this is a place for Joe’s cooking to shine’. And rightly so. But so much of the draw of both of their sites is undoubtedly also the warmth and easy charm of the foh team. They’re a huge part of successfully communicating what Joe's doing in the kitchen, because they make everyone feel that this experience is for them. The significance of that, particularly in this corner of the world, can’t be understated.
Richard and Daniel are joined by Ana, who just moved here from Noma in what Richard describes as the ‘biggest coup for UK hospitality’. He also stresses how crucial Meg, now running Flawd, has been to their journey—she’s had a huge creative input from the start in developing the brand and restaurant design (props to her partner Ben too, for his graphic design work). This is clearly a team that’s invested in the project, and one that’s been carefully selected to sustain it long-term.
Part of their philosophy in regards to staff retention is, interestingly, empowering them to leave. Stefan from Track is in for product training the day I’m there, and I’m told that such visitors are also encouraged to talk about the nitty-gritty of running a business, giving the team the tools and know-how to pursue their own projects. Rather than shoot themselves in the foot, the guys believe that this is part of creating a great work environment—be a place that provides value, as well as a paycheck. It’s also good for building community and a long-term network of like-minded people, whose input into the scene can continue to grow long after their professional relationship with the restaurant has ended.
I keep seeing this everywhere—whether it’s with suppliers, chefs, artists or guests, developing connections is something they all do well. It’s what Daniel dedicates much of his spare time to, on visits to vineyards across Europe. He talks passionately about not only discovering the most exciting wines to add to their list, but developing relationships with producers, to better understand their stories in order to better appreciate the wines they’re producing. The result is a thoughtful and diverse list from across Europe, with more room for him to explore here than the more concise, focused offering at Flawd allows for.
The wine scene in Manchester is still in its infancy, though steadily gaining traction as more people discover it through the gateway drug that is good food. For all its faults, the gnarly label natural wine craze of the past few years has made good quality wine more appealing to a younger crowd, convincing them to happily spend £30 on a pét-nat at an age when I still thought swigging Rotkäppchen from the bottle was the height of sophistication and celebration.
Weirdly, we haven’t quite got there with food yet. Despite the inevitable instant popularity of Higher Ground, they have been met with some grumblings—that they’re not open on Sundays, that they don’t do lunch in the week, that the £45 chef’s choice menu is too expensive. Ours is a generation accustomed to instant gratification and 24-hour access. We expect shops, cafés and restaurants to serve our every whim and for cheap throwaway commodities, including food, to be readily available. We forget that people might want, even deserve (!), a Sunday off. This is partly because food and the people producing, cooking and serving it aren’t valued as an integral part of our national identity as they are in much of Europe. I’m writing this as the protests in France about retirement age rage on, so it feels doubly topical—we seem to have forgotten how to value the good things in life here. We need a new approach.
Which is why ‘British bistro’ actually feels like the perfect descriptor for Higher Ground. They seem uncomfortable with it (‘we had to call ourselves something, right?’), maybe frustrated by society’s incessant need to tidy everything neatly into easily digestible categories; maybe resistant to being hemmed in by a definition. I get the sense they’re agitating against industry standards and consumer expectations, wanting to break the proverbial mould, but also hesitant to alienate. That’s a very tricky space to exist in, and one that’s hard to label. But the one they landed on fits precisely because it is a contradiction in terms, a juxtaposition that yokes together two separate cultures to make a new one. Isn’t that what we’ve always done? Our beloved national dish, fish and chips—from Jewish immigrants. Even our language is a mashup of Germanic and French, to the extent that I’d argue it’s impossible to think of food outside of this cultural cross-pollination.
National identity is, of course, a narrative that we tell ourselves. That doesn’t make it any less real or emotionally charged. But it does make it malleable and open to interpretation and, crucially, adaptation. Coincidentally, our food system is also in need of a shakeup. Our approach to food, both in the field and at the table, is long overdue an overhaul. Can we not reinvent both, in tandem? If what we eat tells us who we are, what do we want that to be?
I propose that if we can have ‘coronation chicken’ (which is practically a celebration of colonialism), we can bloody well have Joe’s tagliatelle, made with Foster’s Mill flour and eggs from Jane Oglesby’s neighbour. His approach to cooking (i.e., dishes dictated by the land, not vice versa) pre-dates the emergence of most of the food we eat today. Is this really less British than bangers and mash made with factory farmed pork from Denmark? Or ultra-processed vegan sausages from soy monocultures on the other side of the world? I know which I’d prefer. And throw in some joie de vivre whilst you’re at it, even if it means nothing’s open on a Sunday. Because whilst we can’t cherry-pick, we can choose what we stand for.
I like to think that’s what Higher Ground is about. What they’re doing is a kind of alchemy—into the melting pot goes all the hallmarks of a great French bistro (buzzy atmosphere, well-priced well-cooked food), fantastic produce, a real jumble of influences from Copenhagen to Blue Hill, and a genuine dedication to changing the food system. Out comes the perfect blueprint for a modern British cuisine, one that marries flavour with nutrition, local produce with global influence, quality with pleasure, history with sustainability. Onwards—towards a new approach to food that will better reflect, and shape, who we are and what we want to become. The pasta, by the way, is delicious.
Joe, Daniel and Richard in Flawd. Photo credit: Laura Christou