Legacy at The Grand Hotel

I’ve written many times about the unfair tarnishing that restaurants based in hotels seem to suffer in York, with The Park at Marmadukes Townhouse and Hudson’s at The Grand unfairly failing to find the audiences they deserved leading to the chefs involved moving on to pastures new. One of those though is starting to turn…

Pho Vietnamese York

Some buildings seem unduly troublesome for businesses to inhabit and seem to run through tenants at an alarming pace. This is a trend particularly notable on Petergate with Fat Hippo about to take over from Jimmy’s Bar which wasn’t a particularly long-standing tenant after taking over from Cafe Rouge, and The Tea Palace shutting up…

York Restaurant Week returns!

With the York Food & Drink Festival just behind us you might think it’s time for a bit of a break in the cities foodie action, but thanks to York BID that’s not the case as we have York Restaurant Week kicking off on Monday 10th October for its second running in 2022. The event…

The Whippet with OpenTable

Third party booking apps or websites are not something I’m in the habit of using. I’ll lean into the easy utility of Just Eat or Deliveroo when I’m feeling lazy and can’t be bothered to breach my own threshold for food but generally if I want a table at a place in York a few…

Cafe 21 York Fixed Price Menu

It’s not a great time to be managing one’s finances is it? Everything is getting more expensive for all manner of reasons, which is putting a shock through the supply chains on which hospitality relies and shrinking margins to the point at which businesses will have to shut or pass on costs to the customer.…

Tours in a Dish

A food tour can be a great way to get to know a city. I’ve taken advantage of them a few times to get my bearings, including particularly memorable experiences in New York and Amsterdam while I recently had a great look around Leeds with Leeds Food Tours that introduced me to a few places…

Rosa’s Thai York

While York has certainly taken a hit from the economic problems that Covid has inflicted on the country, it is not in the parlous state that some internet commentators would have you believe. Of course we’re not unscathed and there’re a few notably empty units, but a recent trip to Peterborough really reinforced in my…

Fish and Forest

One of the privileges of running this site is to meet people at the beginning of their journey in the hospitality industry and see them grow to realise their potential. Over the years I’ve lost count of the number of well intentioned people opening concepts that are too ambitious, subtly flawed to remove viability or…

The White Horse Poppleton

An adventure doesn’t have to be big, expensive or distant to be impactful. As we settle further back into normality it feels like each activity we’ve not had to enact in a couple of years can almost be an adventure in itself, let alone anything unfamiliar. With that low bar, the prospect of taking Little…