Lisa Goodwin-Allen is executive chef at Northcote. She was first promoted to the position in 2015 after almost a decade as Northcote’s youngest head chef, a role she first took on at the age of 23. Northcote has maintained the Michelin star for more than two decades and Lisa remains passionate about using seasonal and locally sourced ingredients to incorporate her Lancashire roots into her creative dishes. She began her culinary career at Lancaster and Morecambe College and worked at the highly acclaimed Holbeck Ghyll in the Lake District and at David Everitt-Matthais’s two Michelin-starred Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham before arriving at Northcote in 2001 as a demi chef de partie. She quickly moved up through the ranks and was promoted to chef de partie within a year with junior sous and sous chef positions following soon after. “With full control over the menu and how the kitchen operates, it would be foolish not to put my stamp on Northcote and see where I can take it,” Goodwin-Allen recently told The Caterer magazine. Explaining her current approach to cooking, she added: “Less is more for me now. I tell my chefs that when they close their eyes and taste something they should be able to say exactly what’s in a dish.” Goodwin-Allen has been named Restaurant Chef of the Year by the Craft Guild of Chefs, Best Chef of the Year at the Northern Hospitality Awards and has reached the finals of the Roux Scholarship and Young Chef Young Waiter competitions. Her wild rabbit and leek turnover was served at the banquet celebrating the National Trust that was the finale of the BBCs Great British Menu TV series in 2010. She returned to the show as a guest judge in 2016 and was also a chef mentor on MasterChef: The Professionals in 2015 and 2018. In 2017, Goodwin-Allen was involved in Springboard’s Future Chef, an industry-backed resource aimed at inspiring young people aged 12 to 16 to cook through classroom activities, demonstrations, competitions and awards. “I love to encourage people to come into this fantastic industry where you can learn so much and meet so many interesting people,” says Goodwin-Allen.