Is Northern food the BEST in England?

I used to look at a pasty inside a bread roll and think it must be horribly dry. Carbs on carbs, what was that going to do for me? Then I tried one during a northern food picnic in Manchester and had to eat my words along with it.

I only had about forty-eight hours in the city and wasn’t driving, so finding a way to taste regional food was tricky. Hannah made it possible by bringing the food and a picnic blanket. She offered to tell me what she’d picked beforehand, but I asked for a surprise. We did this during the summer 2025 heatwave, which wasn’t necessarily the obvious time to start on hotpot.

Cheese first, because I got distracted

I started with oatcakes and cheese, although there were hot dishes waiting that probably should have come first. The crumbly Lancashire was mild and zesty, just as its description promised, and I loved it. The oatcake was new to me and tasted quite sweet, as well as being so crumbly that I was scattering it all over the park.

I tried Wensleydale with a cracker too, but the crumbly Lancashire was the cheese I kept going back to. I hadn’t come across it in the supermarkets I used in Kent, so this was a particularly nice discovery for me. That doesn’t mean you can’t buy it there; I was talking about what I’d personally found.

Hotpot in a heatwave

Hannah had brought lamb hotpot and beef scouse, with notes to help me understand them. Lamb wasn’t a meat we ate at home when I was growing up, so it still didn’t feel like an obvious choice for me. This hotpot made a very convincing argument.

It had those thin slices of potato, and the lamb was incredibly tender. Even with the temperature heading towards thirty degrees, I’d happily have sat there and finished it. I kept trying to move on to the other food while wanting to go straight back to the hotpot.

I’d heard Scouse used for a person, but beef scouse as a dish was new to me. Hannah’s note described it as something made with lamb or beef and leftovers, and said it went well with red cabbage and bread. Her version had potato, carrot and very tender beef. I found it comforting and filling, and she explained that family recipes can differ.

Initially I thought the lamb hotpot narrowly beat the scouse. Later I returned to the beef with the red cabbage and some of the buttered bread, and the acidity of the cabbage made the combination even better. It was a good reminder that I’d rushed into the tasting without trying everything together as intended.

The pasty barm I thought I wouldn’t understand

The bread roll was described as a barm. My immediate reaction was to call it a bun, but whatever word you use, Hannah’s plan was to put a pasty inside the buttered bread. She’d brought one from the pasty shop in Bolton, and I’d seen this sort of thing online before without understanding it.

I expected dryness, but the filling inside the pasty was moist enough that the whole thing worked. The bread was soft and properly buttered, and the result was shockingly delicious. I got it. It had looked absurd to me until I actually ate it, and then I very much wanted to come back to it after trying the rest.

Black pudding wasn’t quite for me

Black pudding was harder. My first reaction was that I didn’t like it, although I couldn’t properly explain why. On thinking about it, the texture was nice and there were subtle spices I could appreciate. I suspected the idea of what I was eating bothered me more than the taste itself.

It reminded me of trying haggis years earlier. I’d found preparing it unpleasant, but it actually tasted good once I got past that. I hadn’t managed the same separation with the black pudding that morning, so it remained the difficult one in the savoury section.

The cakes had too many currants for my liking

The Chorley cake had crumbly, flaky pastry that I liked, but currants and sultanas wouldn’t be my choice for a sweet filling. The Eccles cake was thicker and had even more of the sort of dried-fruit centre I wasn’t enjoying. Between the two, I preferred the Chorley cake.

The ginger oat biscuits were much more successful for me. I’m not normally a huge ginger fan, but these were crunchy and properly ginger-flavoured, without raisins. By the end I was thrilled with the hotpot, scouse and pasty in its buttered barm. The dried fruit could stay with someone who appreciated it more.

Watch the full video on YouTube.