Before reading this beautiful eulogy to The Moorcock, you may wish to refresh your memory and read Katie’s profile of the sorely missed restaurant, which we originally published in October 2020, by clicking here.

***

The wood-fired ovens were blasting heat and flame, cooking fish, charring vegetables, smoking sauces.

Like most restaurants, the inner-workings of The Moorcock are out of sight of the dining room, and I had to step out into the snow-bitten garden kitchen to take a last look. Mussels opened gently in ramekins above the charcoal, placed gently in concentric circles. Saffron-coloured insides. Smoky-sweet and delicate. Head chef and owner, Alisdair Brooke-Taylor, appeared from inside the storehouse, smiling, wearing a well-used apron.

“Look inside,” he said to Sam, the friend who I’d brought out with me. Sam bent towards the outdoor oven, and placed his hand inside to test the warmth. He’s a chef too, and he wanted to know what was being cooked there. How the heat radiated to warm each area differently, how a primitive resource was being used with finesse and consideration.

Usually only a select few items are cooked on the fires, but pretty much everything was touched by flames that day. It made the meal seem more like a feast ritual—a celebration. We watched the flames flicker a little longer, then left the busy team to it, and returned to our table in the warmth of the pub.

The Moorcock has been more than a pub to me in the small years it was open—for yes, sadly, it has closed.

There is no way in high heaven that The Moorcock could have ever been called my local. I’m not as lucky as that. Stood on top of a hill above Sowerby Bridge, this pub is more than two hours of a trip either way from my home in the Ribble Valley. It is far away enough to merit a whole weekend break to be structured around eating there.

Or, it was. I keep forgetting.

““With every course I laughed—laughed!—with the sheer joy of what I was eating.””

Dining at The Moorcock was always a remarkable experience for me. In the combinations of ingredients and the care with which they were sourced and cooked, cured or pickled, I found deep seams of inspiration. I am not a cook. What I loved about Alisdair, Aimee and their team was the sense of fun worked into everything—each dish was a work of precision and skill, but from a place of creativity and excitement. I always walked away with fresh ideas sparkling inside my skull, feeling like the energy placed into everything I’d eaten had passed into me.

Food made for you by somebody else can be a powerful magic.

***

It is very easy for a critic to say that a place doesn’t take itself too seriously, and for that to sound like a compliment. I always found that Aimee and Alisdair did take The Moorcock incredibly seriously, actually, but that this seriousness wasn’t pretension, but a resolute intention to provide the best food, the best wine, the best beer, the best saké, and the best place to enjoy all these things. You can take something seriously and still have a good time doing it.

When we sat down to eat, what I was most looking forward to was a dish of blackened leeks. Here, the vegetables were always just as important—and often even more delicious—than the meat courses. When our food began to arrive, home-baked sourdough and umami-rich yeast-cultured butter first, the appreciative babbling began.

The house pickles with their extraordinarily separate pickling methods—lacto fermented, soy preserved, salted. Tiny morsels of late summer garden colours, kept alight in the heart of winter.

Fried chicken with jewels of salmon roe balanced on top, doused in a tamari and chilli dressing—a clever, genuinely amusing gesture of Thai cuisine, the salmon roe taking on the role of fish sauce as each individual egg popped in our mouths. A textural rib tickler. We’re still talking about it weeks later.

We cooed over the halibut crudo—so fresh and succulent. Served with a green tomato and onion relish and smoked cream, it was shockingly good. It was save-some-for-the-last-bite good.

Smoked Shetland mussels in their pretty rows were sweet and deeply satisfying. Their Marie Rose sauce was tasty, but by leaning over the table and wiping up some of the smoked cream from the crudo plate, we discovered a taste sensation of our own.

The leeks were everything I wanted—sweet and charred, bitter and creamy, served with a delicate smoked garlic pesto and salty bottarga that elevated such wintery vegetable treasures into high art.

And then, the famous roast potatoes. The crisp skins shattered in my mouth, golden and almost-over, they too were smoked and served with a yeast mayonnaise that added umami oomph and a Marmite tang.

With every course I laughed—laughed!—with the sheer joy of what I was eating. I didn’t choose wine to pair with my meal. I wanted to eat. Instead, once I’d finished my welcome negroni, I chose to celebrate my last meal in my favourite pub with pints of Vocation Brewery’s Bread and Butter pale ale. It was a classy and suitable accompaniment for every dish. For my digestif, I had an Orval.

***

This is where the emotions get muddied. Like the moments at a wake where you consider your own mortality, pint in hand while you joke with cousins, it was a sad time but I could also see a tiny speck of the future.

I bought another pint and spoke to Lars behind the bar. He looked a little overwhelmed. I asked him if he was okay.

“He’s having a baby,” said one of his colleagues. I congratulated him, and asked when he was expecting to become a dad.

“Er…today, really,” he said. “It could be any time now.”

I took my pint to the bathroom where I burst into tears. This man who had served us wonderful things all day while I pined about the closure of my favourite pub was about to become a father. There were more important things happening today, and they were happening all around me. I was so happy for him, felt so silly about my sadness, and reapplied my eyeliner.

““We cannot keep losing our pubs. Something has to change.””

I thought about how us hospitality folks really do work shifts over everything else in our lives—even when we have bosses who would happily send us home if we needed to be gone. Lars had told me he really wanted to be there for the last day, that he was sure the baby was going to continue being late. He was cool with the situation. He meant it, I don’t doubt that, but it couldn’t help feeling symbolic of the industry at large.

When I describe pubs, I say they are more than the bricks that built them and the beer they serve. They are places of warm welcomes and comfort. Along with libraries and cafés, pubs can represent a social space for thinking, congregating and communicating, and we claim our own personal attachments to our local.

I am sad that The Moorcock has closed. Yes, I am. The idea that a top level restaurant rooted so deeply in the welcoming and accessible ideals I shared was suffering like the rest of the industry was crushing. It was selfish sadness. I was projecting, crying about my own business, because how could my silly little bar survive if something so special could not?

I’m sad about the constant closures of our favourite pubs, bars, cafés and restaurants across the whole country. How each struggling independent with a bright idea and a passionate team can only do its best against the relentless rising costs coming at them from all directions. How every venue can’t be saved by well-meaning and personally-invested individuals alone—there are only so many times a person can support local, only so many crowdfunders they can pitch into, and only so many pints and meals we can buy on our own increasingly shrinking household budgets.

Losing places to be inspired in, like The Moorcock, is a devastating blow. But consistently losing our pubs, our places to meet and share ideas, offers only more isolated scenes in our future, and I worry about the sinister, sad outcomes for society this represents. We cannot keep losing our pubs. Something has to change.