This Christmas, Kevin Berkins is celebrating with a special menu, local guest ales and a good old-fashioned welcome. The landlord of the Fence Gate Inn has just been nominated for a record three Publican Awards, and for Restaurant Magazine's Best Dish of the Year. He is also Lancashire and National Sausage Champion, and his meaty links won several gold and silvers at this year's Taste Awards.
"This season is always special for me," says Berkins. "I took over this place 25 years ago on New Year's Day," and he says that business is "great".
Fence Gate is great because of Kevin and his daughter Keeley's hard work. Rather than rely - as do so many pubs - on the short cuts offered by the frozen food man, the Berkins have demonstrated a sincere and enduring commitment to local, seasonal and organic ingredients.
In spite of these newly fashionable credentials, Fence Gate Inn is not a worthy, hand-knitted oatcake type of place, but an honest-to-goodness hostelry that happens to serve excellent fresh food. Although it did make a name for itself last year, when it cooked up the world's richest pie, consisting of 2.5 kilos of Wagyu beef at £500 a kilo, £2,000 worth of matsutake mushrooms, black truffle, four packets of gold leaf and a reduction of two bottles of Mouton Rothschild 1982. The pie was a one-off for a customer who'd "had a good day at the office," says Kevin. Only cost him £8,000. "It tasted out of this world - nearly as tasty as our kitchen's regular steak, ale and mushroom pies."
Despite this, the Fence is not in traditional Wag country, but a pretty, un-gaudy rural Lancashire village whose few buildings are the colour of wet macintoshes. West of Bronte Country and near the Ribble Valley, it's also close enough for a good pre-prandial tramp up Pendle Hill, whose Witches remain central to the folklore of the area. Perhaps less remembered is young George Fox, whose vision on the Hill in 1652 led him to found the Quakers.
Today, the handsome late 17th-century inn is a vision in russet and red. Local farmers drop in with their produce and for a glass of Theakstons, or the micro-brewed seasonal beers: the rather wonderful Bowland Gold, and Black Sheep from Ennerdale. Eddie Cowpe delivers Huntley's Lancashire ice cream; Mr Smith, his Samlesbury organic pork; there's Bob Kitching with his organic Lancashire cheese from the dairy at Chipping; duck from Goosnargh; beef from the Trough of Bowland; Pendle Forest lamb; leeks from Formby; tiny sweet brown shrimps from Morecambe Bay; late damsons from Westmorland.
A butcher for 20 years before he became a publican, Kevin still makes his award-winning sausages and black puddings on the premises. Though he's eschewed the temptation to design a Yuletide sausage, Berkins' products do feature on the Christmas Fayre menu, his black pudding being beautifully teamed with North Sea scallops, and in a Lancashire Tart that layers black pudding with organic pork sausages, smoked bacon and potatoes dug from Southport's rich loam, all topped with Mrs Kirkham's smoked Lancashire cheese. The potatoes come from Sean Mallinson, who, together with other growers within a 50-mile radius, has signed up to the Harvest Northwest scheme, of which the Fence Gate Inn is an enthusiastic participant. The scheme puts in place a distribution system that allows produce to be delivered on the day it's dug. "Using local produce not only supports Lancashire's farmers," says Kevin, "It lets us work with the land, offering fresh ingredients in season. That's what we want. That's what our customers want - it's not rocket science, is it?"
· Fence Gate Inn, Wheatley Lane Rd, Fence, Nr Burnley, Lancashire, 10 minutes from M65 junction 12 (01282 618101, fencegate.co.uk). Bar open daily, normal opening hours except Christmas Day, open noon-4.30pm. Brasserie open daily lunch noon-2.30pm, dinner 6.30pm-9.30pm; the Brasserie is fully booked on Christmas Day. Average meal for 2 including wine £65.
