Reflections on 2020

Well, that didn’t quite go according to plan did it? This time last year I was reminiscing on the preceding 12 months and commenting that “it’s been quite an eventful year”, blissfully ignorant of the incoming tsunami of unwanted eventfulness that would make 2020 a pretty bruising experience for all of us, including a now…

Tiers of joy with The Feversham Arms

Tiers is a bit of a dirty word at the moment, especially so in the hospitality industry where it represents painful curbs on the ability to make a living and go about our daily business without frustrating restrictions on the basic freedoms we usually take for granted. In the midst of all this confusion, I’ve…

A sense of occasion at The Ivy

For the sake of our collective mental health it’s important we keep finding positives in the midst of this mess, no matter how small, so in the run up to Halloween I took some minor comfort in the idea that I wouldn’t have to deal with a bunch of trick or treaters this year. The…

Lunch with The Deramore Arms

So here we are, pubs and restaurants are shut again along with “non-essential” retail (subject to a few creative interpretations of ‘essential’ from what I’ve seen) and we’re hostages in our own homes again, albeit to a lesser extent than our last run through of this. When things ease again at the beginning of December,…

Estabulo Rodizio York

Retail parks don’t tend to make fertile hunting grounds for interesting food. They tend to be identikit offerings geared toward the safest possible meal to appease the largest number of people possible while still turning a profit, and all without too much distraction from the day’s spending. While there’ll always be a place in the…

Forest at Galtres Lodge

Petergate is home to some fabulous businesses and, rightly, is one of the the city’s most photographed streets featuring some landmark buildings. Amongst these is the hotel Galtres Lodge which over the past decade or so has done precious little to attract my attention to its place to eat, previously named Michael’s Brasserie and being…

Shambles Kitchen bring fire to Shambles Food Court

While we’ve been blessed thus far (excepting for some irritatingly unpredictable days) with a summer reasonably conducive to outdoor entertainment, we’d be foolish to think that will be a continuing state of affairs. That being the case, as we come into autumn and winter, it’ll be correspondingly important for businesses to establish new bridgeheads into…

The Pheasant Hotel at Harome

Remarkable as it may seem, there are quite a few places on my mental checklist of Yorkshire restaurants that I simply haven’t gotten around to visiting. It’s unfair to lay all the blame for this at the feet of Baby Fork but it does feel like it’s a list that isn’t shrinking as quickly since…