Nigel Haworth is back at the Three Fishes in Lancashire

"I nearly opened a restaurant in Lytham," he says. "But I kept cycling past the Three Fishes, which I first opened in 2004 and I still had a lot of affection for. And then I bumped into Martin Aspinall, who is the trustee of the Standen Estate, which owns the land around the Fishes, and he asked me if I'd be interested in taking on the lease. I thought, well, it's got my name associated with it from previous times. It might be a good thing to do."

By the time the Three Fishes reopened in November 2021, the pub had been closed for two and a half years. But it wasn't just the opportunity to take a cycle down memory lane that appealed to Haworth. "What we're doing here is farm to fork," he says. "We've got a large polytunnel and we've got an acre of land. We'll grow as much as we possibly can ourselves and work the menus around the produce. We're going to rear our own chickens and all the beef, lamb and venison we use is local. The Fishes is a re-engagement of what I've done ever since I came back home to Lancashire in the early 1980s, when no one was doing local food."

Haworth is as embedded in the Lancashire food scene as a stick of Blackpool rock – or the Lancashire hotpot he cooked on Great British Menu. His career in hospitality began with a two-year catering course at Accrington College in the mid-1970s before spending five years in Switzerland, eventually becoming the sous chef of the Hotel Palace in Lucerne.

He returned home to teach part-time at Accrington College. Unable to find a Lancashire restaurant where he wanted to work and having promised his wife Kathrine that they wouldn't move again, Haworth was about to join the police until his aunt told him of a family friend called Craig Bancroft, who had recently returned from London and had joined Northcote Manor as general manager.

Northcote in 1984 was, Haworth says, "a late-night drinking spot." As for the Ribble Valley, it was somewhere that even Lancastrians would bypass on the M6 en route to the Lake District. All that changed, however, over the next 30 years as Haworth and his now business partner Bancroft set about transforming Northcote into one of the UK's most prestigious country house hotels.

Haworth was named the Egon Ronay Chef of the Year in 1995, Northcote was awarded a Michelin star in 1996, while Haworth and Bancroft opened five gastropubs in the mid-noughties under the Ribble Valley Inns brand, including the Three Fishes, which won them the Catey Award for Pub and Bar Operator of the Year in 2005. Meanwhile, the chefs who have passed through the doors of Northcote include Mark Birchall of Moor Hall, Tom Parker of the White Swan at Fence and Lisa Goodwin-Allen, who is now Northcote's executive chef.

Does Haworth feel proud of having put Lancashire firmly on the foodie map? "I've never thought of it that way," he says. "Craig and I just got on really well and fell in love with Northcote. We put our life and soul into the place and set about building it up from a run-down, five-bedroom restaurant with rooms into somewhere we were proud of, a 26-room boutique hotel."

Haworth parted ways with Northcote in 2020, following the sale of the business to the Stafford Collection; he left his role as Northcote's chef-patron in 2017 but remained as a consultant for another three years. "We had to get new investors in," he says. "I'd done 30 years as chef-patron and I didn't want to work for somebody else. So I negotiated to leave. I felt it was the right time and I was young enough to do something different."

He still speaks to Bancroft but has little contact with Goodwin-Allen, which he regrets. "It's not been the easiest time," Haworth admits. "And it hasn't been the best end to something I put my life into. I don't think it's anybody's fault in particular. Covid threw lots of difficult things at everybody."

Haworth's second time at Three Fishes

Bancroft and Haworth originally launched the Three Fishes in 2004, before selling their pub portfolio in 2018 to Brunning & Price, which closed the Three Fishes a year later. Yet the 2022 Three Fishes is no re-tread of its noughties incarnation.

"The Three Fishes today is hugely different," Haworth says. "The 2004 version was a classic gastropub doing 300 covers a day and 500 on Sundays, smashing out fish and chips, fish pies and all that. This time around I wanted to do something much more intimate, reflecting the seasons and the times we live in. I want the Three Fishes to be more sustainable, more detailed and emphasising flavour rather than presentation."

Still, much as Haworth says he's no longer "trying to make pictures on plates", a terrine of Fleetwood fish with butter sauce and coriander with a pair of prawns artfully arranged on the side, looks as pretty as anything you'll find in the UK. However, it's how those ingredients taste that is fundamental to the success of the dish, demonstrating Haworth's innate understanding of the produce of his home county built up over 40 years.

Take a main course of leg of lamb. Most chefs are now familiar with Herdwick lamb from Cumbria, but Haworth uses Lonk lamb in season, a Lancashire breed originally farmed by the monks of Whalley Abbey, down the road from the Three Fishes (and the village where Haworth was born).

"I get the lamb from Rob Spence, who I've known for 30-odd years and is the chairman of the Lonk Sheep Breeders' Association. It's a gamier breed that grazes on the fells in the Trough of Bowland, and it's available three months later than spring lamb."

Haworth ages the legs for two weeks in a salt chamber and serves them with leek purée, mashed potato and a sauce made from barley, diced lamb's liver and Lancashire bitter pulled off the pumps in the pub. "We're trying to be very simple, but the food is never simple," Haworth chuckles.

The 60-cover dining room, with interiors designed by Kathrine Haworth, serves between 350 and 500 customers a week, with around 100 each day at the weekend.

From Wednesday to Friday, an à la carte menu of a dozen individually priced ‘specials' supplements the main, four-course seasonal menu (£50/£65 at lunch/dinner), with a three-course menu (£55) served at Sunday lunch.

The limited menu offering is dictated by the team of seven chefs. "One of my managers asked me why we don't offer the à la carte on Saturday and I said, we need to do 50 covers at lunch and 55 at night and we're already busy enough in the kitchen," Haworth explains. "You've got to work around the team you have. If you don't, you won't survive."

Jobs at the Three Fishes

Haworth describes himself as head chef, if only because his original head chef dropped out a fortnight before opening, a difficult situation made worse by the fact that Haworth missed training his new team because he had Covid.

He is currently recruiting a new head chef to help him develop the business and reduce his time in the kitchen, but confesses there are plus sides to spending so many hours on-site. "This feels like going back in time for me. It's nice to meet all the customers, and after Covid it's a welcome relief to re-engage with people and see that they're enjoying what we're doing."

Haworth thinks it will take him another year to get the Three Fishes where he wants it to be. Immediate projects include planting an orchard for apples and soft fruits, introducing a no-dig policy to the vegetable plots and establishing a co-operative with Flavourfresh Salads over on the Ribble estuary to supply the Three Fishes with what can't be grown on-site. Future plans include putting an organic coffee shop and function room in the tithe barn in the pub's grounds.

Would Haworth ever embark upon opening another empire of gastropubs? "My intention is not to do more at the moment, but only time will tell," he says. "The Three Fishes is a very special place. It has so much potential. I'm rediscovering that."

When Brunning & Price closed the Three Fishes in 2019, Haworth told the Lancashire Telegraph: "It breaks my heart. I hope somebody buys it and can rekindle it." Little did anyone anticipate that it would be Haworth's golden years igniting that glow.

"We are bereft of staff"

Haworth's team are all Lancashire locals and he admits that he did not anticipate needing to use an agency to recruit a head chef. The current staffing shortage, he says, is the biggest crisis he has experienced in over 40 years in hospitality.

"We are an industry bereft of staff. The government doesn't understand the pressures that creates. There is absolutely no structure in this country for education in the culinary arts. Most of the colleges have shut down. Brexit has made a difficult situation even harder because 15% of staff have vanished. The demands from customers get higher and higher and we're constantly under the social media spotlight. And yet there's no training infrastructure. It's just a joke."

Is he pessimistic about the future of the industry? "Perhaps this is not a good time to open a restaurant," he says. "And people might ask, so why do it? But we're all fighters in hospitality and we'll fight our way through this. I am optimistic that we will develop a great business and I'm very lucky that I've got a lovely bunch of loyal staff, front and back of house."

On the menu at Three Fishes

Seasonal menu

Lunch, £50 per person; dinner, £65 per person

• Cheese rolls and whey butter
• Yorkshire asparagus, panzanella, wild garlic pesto, house shoots
• Hebridean scallop, white chicory, samphire, wood sorrel, lemon emulsion
• Roe deer, potato wrapped black pudding, hen of the woods, miso
• Bramley apple crumble soufflé, apple compote, Lancashire cheese ice-cream
• Eccles cake

Specials

• Six Morecombe Bay osters, shallot house dressing, wholemeal sourdough bread and whey butter £18
• Salt-baked yellow beets, sea prawns, smoked eel, horseradish, trout caviar, spicy crumbs £14
• Wild garlic risotto, wild garlic pesto, spiced aubergine, Parmesan, hazelnuts £12.50/£25
• Wild sea bass grilled, new season asparagus, hollandaise sauce, Jersey Royals £45
• Blue Grey beef for two: grilled double fillet, béarnaise sauce, roasting juices, roast baby onion, triple cooked chips £95
• Yorkshire rhubarb, iced custard, crumble, chewy fruits £14
• Lemon meringue pie, yuzu sorbet, buttermilk £12