Oldham chef has forged successful career after battling grief

Rachel heads the kitchen at The Oak Bar and Grill, one of the most exciting venues to come to the forefront of the hospitality industry in the borough, but it didn’t come easy.

Located on Oldham Road in Failsworth, the establishment looks like a run-down old man’s pub – which at one point it was – but a new lease of life now flows through it, thanks to landlady Annette Nokes and her partner Andrew Povah.

But it is the woman donning chef whites, or to be literal chef blacks, who draws in Oldham’s foodies.

The Oak Bar & Grill's new bar (Image: The Oak Bar & Grill)

However, it took grief, and 18 long years, before success deservedly came to the 40-year-old mother-of-one.

Her passion for food came from her father who travelled around the world for his work, where he specialised in engineering, visiting countries like Saudi Arabia, Germany and American states Georgia and Alaska – just a few of the places Rachel recalled.

“He just loved to cook and was really good at it,” she said.

“His dream was to go into the navy and cook but he ended up meeting my mum and that never happened.

Rachel donning her chef blacks (Image: The Oak Bar and Grill)

“He just always had a feel for cooking, and working away he always had new recipes to cook for us.”

It wasn’t until 2006 while living in Spain when Rachel, who was in her early 20s, decided to cash in on cooking – at that point it was just scotch eggs and sausage rolls to the English bars in Alicante.

The fruits of her labour came through a job working alongside a chef in a beach hut in Murcia, but when the chef walked out she grasped the opportunity.

Rachel said: “They were all panicking, ‘I don’t know what to do’, they said, so I told them ‘I will do it I can work for free today and show that I can do it’ because I was working beside her and watched her do everything.

Two black pudding bon bons remained for the picture from the original three delivered when The Oldham Times visited in February (Image: Newsquest)

“I said 'give me a chance and I can prove to you’, so they gave me that job all summer and I was cooking Spanish tapas with fresh fish.

“That was that then I had other jobs running kitchens over there, then I got pregnant and I came home. I didn’t do it again until my daughter was about three – 2012 I started again.”

Her career restarted while working the Windmill, on Lord Lane in Failsworth. At first she waitressed but when a chef was in need she stepped up, so much so that she began running the kitchen on his days off.

That was only temporary as Rachel moved to Whitefield and again she shied away from cooking. 

Instead she worked in a salon.

Salt and pepper chicken wings were emptier than when they delivered after we picked at them before taking a picture (Image: Newsquest)

“In 2019 my father passed away and I had his funeral in Failsworth, that’s where he was from, I felt the love and I felt I was ready to move back,” she said.

“So I started a meal prep business from home, because it was Community Fitness who spurred me on to do it - they told me it would be good for the area to be able to a gym that was friendly not intimidating and was only £1 to get involved with.

“I got loads of orders, then within three weeks I moved to Failsworth, did the meal prep from home and grew the business from then.”

Business boomed once she started doing graze boards, a trend which started during the pandemic and was a fancy spread of simply cheese and bread, olives and charcuterie too – but that varied significantly.

Cheese and red onion pie, accompanied with thick cut chips, tenderstem broccoli and melted cheese to dip (Image: Newsquest)

It continued to grow and Rachel traded out of a cabin and later a shop, before the passing of her mum in 2022 shortly after lockdown.

She said: “I wasn’t in the right mental place I was grieving with the loss of my mum and dad. I needed to address the problems and tried to sell the business.

“The landlord let me get some other people in the shop, he was really understanding

"I went for counselling for a year to be in a better mental state then the Oak came up.

“They said they wanted me to cook for them, and so now there’s two people working with me in the kitchen - three of us in total, two kitchen porters and me.”

Having overcome an intermittent start to life as a chef, Rachel Cropper rediscovered the taste for cooking and her plates wowed The Oldham Times when it visited in February – with her homemade black pudding bon bons stealing the show.