The sight of City Cruises boats giving tourists a view of York’s riverside is a familiar one, especially if you live near the Millennium Bridge (as I do). They’re a mainstay of the city’s tourism offering which makes great use of one of our natural resources, turning the River Ouse into a great alternative viewpoint…
Pies can be a bit of a minefield and inspire strong emotions. Many is the time at a function where a pie is promised and what is delivered is a stew with a cursory sheet of puff pastry plonked on top; generally satisfying enough, but certainly not a pie. Taking things rather more seriously are…
The more things change, the more they stay the same. York has built its reputation on large elements of its attraction having remained unchanged for a great many years, but there’s part of the city that holds a mirror up to that and looks forward. The nature of the hospitality industry, whose operators are always…
York does rather well for wine these days. Since Pairings started blazing a trail for quality wine in relaxed surroundings, there have been a few others recently enter the fray with places such as Howl, 2ManyWines, The Wright Place and Jorvine all throwing their corks into the ring. The latest to join this group is…
Whether or not a Sunday roast needs elevating can be a contentious point. The view that, if eating out, a roast is best enjoyed in a pub by a roaring fire with a couple of pints of good Yorkshire beer is broadly held and with good reason. If you want to make more of an…
When ruminating on a recent visit to Yahala Mataam I was pondering the tailing off and subsequent resurgence of pop-ups in our city so it rather makes sense to continue with another that I attended just the following night to neatly illustrate my point. Melk on Clifford St has firmly established itself now as a…
Pop-ups and supper clubs seemed to have been steadily slowing down in popularity before the pandemic restrictions put everything back to a crawl by default a few years back. A decade or so ago there were a few popular supper clubs in York which all came to an end but over the last year or…
Spark has done a lot for the hospitality scene in York both directly and indirectly. As a venue to be able to reliably grab decent food in a relaxed, family friendly setting, it’s broadened the city’s offering greatly and as a launchpad for new businesses it’s made a strong contribution to the wider offering and…
That was a bit more normal wasn’t it? Well aside from the potential for nuclear conflict, the pandemic continuing to wind down, the energy crisis, the cost of living crisis and the death of the monarch…but in general 2022 did have the feeling of returning to a bit of normality as pandemic restrictions were lifted…
A couple of decades ago when I was familiarising myself with York in my early days here, I was taken by some friends to a “really cool bar” on Lendal that had been a hangout in their later youth. My memories of the visit are now at some distance but I was shocked that such…