What to Eat in York: 16 Foods, Traditions and Their Stories

COUNTRYLOOK FOOD ATLAS · YORKSHIRE

Sixteen foods that tell York’s story, from curd tarts and Sunday puddings to the spice cakes its bakers once fought over.

A curd tart is usually the first thing I want in York. I like the little shift from crisp pastry to soft cheese, then the sweetness when you come across a currant. The milk has a story that takes you out to the Dales. The fruit and spice take you farther away again. There’s a surprising amount of Yorkshire in that small thing you can eat out of a paper bag.

Some of these foods were made in York, including the chocolate bars that came off the city’s factory lines. Others are Yorkshire traditions you can get to know here, like parkin and Wensleydale with fruit cake. I’d start with a curd tart if you’re here for the afternoon. Give yourself a Sunday and there’s another pleasure altogether in the pudding that comes with the roast.

I’ve a soft spot for the things you have to do a little digging to find. An old ham recipe tells you to put an egg in the pickle. The city’s bakers once complained about widows making spice cake. A chocolate apple kept its place beside an orange for years. You can still get a good piece of cake in York, and you can read your way into an older kitchen when the recipe is all that’s left.

There are sixteen food stories here. The places guide afterwards is where I’d look for a particular pie, cheese or cup of tea, with shops and makers as well as places to sit down. At the end I’ve put together six drinks with their own Yorkshire connections, from a pint of mild to wine from vines outside the city.

Foods that explain York

THE FOOD · 01 / 16

1. Yorkshire curd tart: the little pastry with a whole dairy behind it

Yorkshire tradition · Dairy, baking and the seasons

The curd tart I remember most fondly had pastry that broke up a little as I got to the edge. The filling was soft, with just enough grain to tell you there was cheese in it. Every now and then a currant made the next bite sweeter. I’d save a tart like that until I could sit down with a cup of tea, although I’ve rarely been very good at saving one.

It begins with milk. Traditionally it was set with rennet and drained to make fresh curds. Eggs, butter and sugar make the curds into a filling, with currants and a little nutmeg tucked in. I like the pastry well baked and the spice quiet enough that you can still taste the dairy. The curds give it a different feel from a smooth cheesecake filling.

There was a time of year for this. In the Yorkshire Dales, curd from the early spring milk could be less suited to a cheese that had to keep. It was useful for a tart, particularly when there was a feast or fair to bake for. The custom feels wonderfully practical when you read The Courtyard Dairy’s account of spring dairying and the Whitsun tart.

The milk and the spice tell two different parts of the same story. Farms could supply the dairy, while currants and nutmeg reached bakers through trade. York had markets and river connections for goods from much farther away. Curd-filled pastries had cousins elsewhere in Britain, too. It’s this Yorkshire combination of dairy, pastry and seasoning that I’d look for here.

Buy a small tart from a bakery that makes it as part of its ordinary trade and see what you notice first. Thomas the Baker is a useful York stop. The maker gives the Yorkshire sources of several of its ingredients, and the tart itself is a good way to find out which bit you’d miss if you changed the recipe. For me it would be the slight tang of the curds.

THE FOOD · 02 / 16

2. York ham: a famous name and a rather less certain history

York-associated speciality · Butchery and preservation

An egg is the last thing I expected to find in a York ham recipe. In an 1819 set of instructions, the cook uses one to judge the strength of the pickle. If it will float, the brine is strong enough. I keep thinking of the person having to decide whether a whole joint could be trusted to it. Getting the salt right mattered quite a lot more than what you eventually called the ham.

The name had a reputation by then. An advertisement from 1762 already offered York ham as something worth naming. Older instructions describe pork rubbed with salt, sometimes followed by a strong brine, and different ways of drying and smoking. There are accounts of hams packed in straw. You can see how much the method varied in the advertisements and recipes collected by Foods of England.

There’s a story that the flavour came from wood connected with York Minster. It’s the sort of detail I’d love to be true. The evidence for it is thin, and the surviving recipes give us a better way to imagine the work. Drying and curing take time. A ham’s flavour depended on someone making decisions about the cut, the salt and where it would hang.

With a well-cured ham, I like a slice thin enough to see how the meat has firmed. The salt should leave room for the flavour of the pork. A little lingering savour is the point of taking the time over it. “York” on a modern label gives you a name to follow up. Ask where the ham was cured, how it was made and whether the pork itself came from Yorkshire.

A reliably documented maker selling the historical York cure in the city is hard to pin down. The story is worth keeping for the old recipes and the reach the name had. I’d save the shopping trip for something with a named maker and a method you can ask about.

THE FOOD · 03 / 16

3. Yorkshire pudding: the batter that made the most of a roasting fire

Yorkshire tradition · The Sunday table

Give me the corner of a Yorkshire pudding from a big tin. There’s an edge that snaps a little and a softer patch underneath where the gravy gathers. I remember thinking as a child that the corners must be the reason anyone bothered making the whole thing. They were certainly the pieces that went first.

Hannah Glasse had a much better reason. Her recipe cooks the batter beneath the roasting meat so the dripping lands in the pan. There was a joint on the fire and fat coming off it. The cook could put that to work, giving eggs, flour and milk the savour of the roast as they cooked. The instructions are in Glasse’s Art of Cookery, first published in 1747.

Those broad puddings could be cut into portions. Mrs Beeton still gives instructions for a large one in the nineteenth century. It makes sense of the Yorkshire habit of serving pudding with gravy ahead of the meat. You could have something filling from the roast before the meat itself came round. A modern individual pudding gives everybody an edge of their own, which I suppose is fairer.

Look for a browned rim and a middle tender enough to take a spoonful of gravy. A pudding can be quite modest in height and still get that balance right. It’s a Yorkshire tradition with a place at Sunday tables all over the county. In York, the Rose & Crown has a Sunday menu worth looking up if this is the food you came for.

The batter also turns up in a wrap in York, folded around the whole roast. Keep the crispness of the Sunday pudding in mind when you try one. The people making the wrap had to solve a different problem, which was how to get a pudding to bend without giving up the flavour it gets from browning.

THE FOOD · 04 / 16

4. Yorkshire parkin: the cake that improves when you leave it alone

Yorkshire tradition · Oatmeal, treacle and autumn

Parkin is one of those cakes I’d rather find in the tin a few days later. The piece I always want is the sticky one, with the faint roughness of the oatmeal still there under all that dark treacle. The ginger comes through a moment after the sweetness. A fresh piece can be firmer, and there’s a particular pleasure in seeing what a little patience does to it.

Oatmeal gives Yorkshire parkin its grain and weight. Treacle brings the dark, almost bitter edge that makes the ginger worth noticing. The texture depends on the recipe and on how long it’s been left. It’s a good cake to ask a baker about. A plain explanation of when it was made tells you more than a ribbon round the box.

I think of it with Bonfire Night, but people were arguing over the ingredients long before any of us brought it out in foil. An Elland record from 1729 is about meal someone was asked to steal for a parkin. The Mirfield diarist John Turner recorded giving his wife a penny for treacle in November 1750. Somebody had to pay for the little things that made the cake special. The Yorkshire Historical Dictionary has the records under parkin and treacle.

The cake has changed shape as well as recipe. Food historian Peter Brears describes older, thin oatmeal parkins cooked on a bakstone. With ovens and chemical raising agents, a thicker cake became possible. I find that a better way to think about an old recipe. The equipment a cook could get hold of changed what the next generation thought of as parkin.

Lottie Shaw’s, in the Yorkshire Pennines, rests its parkin before it goes on sale. That’s a useful lead if you’d like to compare it with one you’ve just made. The baker belongs to wider Yorkshire, and there’s an ordering link in the places section.

THE FOOD · 05 / 16

5. The Fat Rascal: an old Yorkshire name with a surprisingly modern face

Yorkshire baking tradition · A modern interpretation

There is a moment with a Fat Rascal when you have to decide which end of the face to eat first. The cherry goes quite easily. The almond sticks out of the crust and gives the mouthful a little snap. Underneath is a great rough-edged fruit scone with currants and candied citrus. I like it with the butter soft enough to catch on the crumb.

The face is younger than the name. Yorkshire has older fruit bakes called fat rascals and turf cakes, with recipes that varied from place to place. The glacé cherries and almonds gave a regional name a face that people can now recognise from across a shop counter. Bettys dates its own Fat Rascal to 1983.

If I’m having one with tea, I like it a little warm. The butter settles into the cut surface and the bits of peel have enough sharpness to come through. It’s a substantial bake. A little fruit and a fair bit of butter do more for it than icing ever could.

What interests me about that particular Fat Rascal is how quickly a modern version can come to feel familiar. Someone who learnt an older turf-cake recipe at home might picture a different shape and texture entirely. Both belong to the history of Yorkshire fruit baking. The one with the face has a particular maker and a date we can put beside it.

A Fat Rascal from the St Helen’s Square shop gives you the bake on its own terms. I’d try it that way if the thing you came for was the pastry case and all that fruit. The story of the tea rooms themselves gets its turn farther down.

THE FOOD · 06 / 16

6. Wensleydale: the cheese that was not always so crumbly

Yorkshire Dales tradition · Farmhouse dairying

The first time I had a softer, farmhouse-style Wensleydale alongside the crumbly sort, it was the finish that surprised me. The crumbly piece had a fresh, clean sharpness. The other lingered longer and felt almost buttery by the time it had warmed in my mouth. It was a useful reminder of how much difference there can be under one name.

In the Dales, making cheese gave farms a way to keep and sell milk beyond the day it was drawn. Much of that work fell to women in farm households. Setting, draining and pressing a curd meant getting to know how the milk behaved through the seasons. Older cheeses varied with the farm and the make, and some developed a blue vein.

The trade changed as liquid milk found a market and farmhouse cheesemaking gave way to production on a larger scale. The survival of cheesemaking at Hawes took people who wanted it to carry on. The Yorkshire Dales National Park tells the story through Kit Calvert and the Wensleydale Dairy.

At the counter I’d ask for a plain crumbly Wensleydale and a piece of something like Curlew Dairy’s Yoredale, formerly called Old Roan, or Kit Calvert Old-Style. Give them time to lose the chill. Milk, cultures, the handling of the curd and the length of the make can all alter what you taste. You may still prefer the clean, milder wedge, particularly if there’s fruit cake on the plate.

Wensleydale belongs to the Dales. York is a place to look for it and ask a cheesemonger which version they have. The Pie Shop & Deli in Clifton lists named Yorkshire cheeses. It’s worth finding out which ones are in before making a special journey.

THE FOOD · 07 / 16

7. The Shambles, the butcher and the pork pie

York food history · Meat markets and traditional butchery

The shelves outside the old shops on the Shambles are the detail I’d show someone who comes for the timberwork. You can see how close the business of selling meat was to the people walking past. In 1830 the street held twenty-five of York’s eighty-eight listed butchers. Imagine the number of households buying their dinner in the space you can cover in a few minutes on foot. York Civic Trust’s history of the Shambles.

There was work behind those frontages as well. Meat had to be cut, stored and moved through a busy city, and the waste had to go somewhere. I like knowing what the street was built around before I turn the corner for something to eat. The shelves and the hooks tell you rather a lot about who needed the Shambles.

A pork pie is a good thing to put beside that story. It belongs to a much wider tradition of butcher’s pies. The hot-water crust has to stand up to a substantial filling and still be pleasant cold. A little jelly can fill the gap left as the meat cools. The work is in getting the crust, seasoned pork and jelly in proportion.

The piece I go for is the one that holds together as you pick it up. The pastry gives a clean break and there’s a little pepper in the meat. I like a dab of English mustard if the pie’s good enough that I can still taste it afterwards. A pint of mild beside it is the sort of lunch I’m quite happy to linger over.

The Blue Bell on Fossgate lists pork pies from York Pie Co. and a regular cask mild. There’s also a pie shop on the Shambles itself. Either gives you a present-day way to try the craft after looking at the old shops. The places guide below has the details. The Blue Bell’s ales and pies.

THE FOOD · 08 / 16

8. Fruit pastilles, humbugs and the people who made York sweet

York confectionery · Sugar, enterprise and industrial invention

A fruit pastille makes you wait. The sugar goes first and the fruit stays with you as the sweet gives way. It’s the chew I remember from a bag of them, especially if I’ve had a boiled humbug just before and expect a crack. That difference took a fair bit of work to get right in York.

Start in Walmgate. Mary Tuke opened her grocery there in 1725, when the city’s Merchant Adventurers tried to restrict who could trade. Her family’s business grew into cocoa and chocolate manufacture. Henry Isaac Rowntree took it on in 1862. I like to keep the grocer’s shop in the picture when the story reaches the scale of a factory. The Rowntree Society’s account of Mary Tuke.

In 1879 Rowntree employed Claude Gaget, a French confectioner, to develop new sweets. The first batches took some persuading. Gaget worked through early rejections before the crystallised gum pastilles went on sale in 1881 at a penny an ounce. The success helped give the business room to grow. The Rowntree Society’s account of Claude Gaget.

Mary Ann Craven took over her family’s sweet business after her husband died in 1860. She ran it for more than forty years, selling toffees, humbugs and other sweets. Craven’s later factory stood at Coppergate. The site’s redevelopment made way for the archaeology that led to the JORVIK Viking Centre. If you’re in Coppergate, look for Mary Ann Craven’s plaque.

A boiled sweet holds its shape and dissolves slowly. The pastille has to yield and stay fruit-flavoured while you chew it. I’d try both if you want to get a sense of the work behind something sold by the ounce. The little difference in the mouth explains why the people who knew how to make them mattered to York.

THE FOOD · 09 / 16

9. Terry's Chocolate Orange: a dessert that learned to come apart

York invention · Chocolate manufacture and design

There’s always one segment of a Chocolate Orange that refuses to come away. I remember thinking I’d cracked the whole thing, peeling back the foil and finding two pieces still joined at the middle. I ate them together, of course. That’s the clever part of Terry’s design. A bar divides into squares. This turns breaking it open into part of the pleasure.

An apple came out of Terry’s Chocolate Works first. It went into production in 1926, the Orange in 1931, and the apple stayed on sale until 1954. There’s a 1936 brochure with both in it, a lovely glimpse of a time when either might have become the one everybody knew. The dates are in the Borthwick Institute’s Terry archive.

Terry’s had already spent years working with fruit and sugar. Its earlier trade took in candied peel, marmalade and sweets with medicinal uses. An 1834 recipe book lists raspberry vinegar, treacle parkin and port wine lozenges. At the Clementhorpe works, the river helped bring in goods such as sugar, cocoa, peel and coal. The later Bishopthorpe Road factory let Terry’s work on a much bigger scale.

I’d look at a wedge before eating it. The thin end breaks more readily and there’s more chocolate to melt towards the rounded outside. A mould had to make a sphere that could survive the journey home and then give way when you wanted it to. An agreeable orange flavour mattered. The way it came apart gave people something to do together.

The apple got another outing when the Borthwick team found a recipe and worked with a chocolatier to recreate it for an event. A brochure or a recipe can get you surprisingly close to a sweet the shops stopped selling decades ago. The archivists explain how they made it happen in their account of the Chocolate Apple project.

THE FOOD · 10 / 16

10. KitKat, Aero and the surprising importance of what is missing

York invention · Industrial chocolate and the everyday snack

I’ve never found a very tidy way to eat an Aero that’s got warm. The chocolate softens around those little holes and the corners start to give. A KitKat has another sort of pleasure. The wafer layers still give you a snap after the chocolate starts to melt. Both ideas came out of Rowntree’s, and the detail that makes them work is inside.

Rowntree launched Chocolate Crisp in 1935 and later gave it the KitKat name. Aero arrived in 1935 as well, in the years when the York business was working hard to find new lines. In the wafer bar, the thin layers make a solid-looking finger light and crisp. With Aero, it’s the air that changes the way the chocolate breaks and melts. The Rowntree Society on the company’s 1930s launches.

Try getting the layers or the bubbles the same from one bar to the next and you get a sense of what people in the factory had to achieve. There were machines to set up, ingredients to handle and a bar that had to feel familiar every time it came out of the wrapper. KitKat is still made in York. That continuity is as interesting to me as the names the bars ended up with.

The history of the ingredients belongs here too. The family is remembered for research into poverty and efforts to improve conditions for workers. I want to know who grew the cocoa as well as who worked on the factory floor. The Rowntree Society records the company buying cocoa produced by enslaved people in São Tomé and Príncipe in the early twentieth century in its research into Rowntree’s colonial history.

If you’ve got both bars to hand, break a piece of each and look at the middle. Then eat them in whatever order takes your fancy. The wafer and the air make a better introduction to what York’s confectioners were doing than a shelf full of wrappers.

WIDER YORKSHIRE · WINTER GROWING

11. Yorkshire forced rhubarb: the crop grown in darkness

Pink rhubarb and custard is one of the puddings I most look forward to towards the end of winter. The stalks can be tender enough to part with a spoon, and I like the bright little shock of the juice against the custard. The forced Yorkshire crop comes from around Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell. York is a place to taste it when it’s in season.

The grower puts in much of the work before you see a pink shoot. The roots grow outside and build up reserves. After cold weather they’re moved into warm, dark sheds. The stored energy sends up new shoots, which the growers cut in low light, traditionally by candlelight. I’d heard about the candles before I understood what the roots had been doing for all that time.

The nineteenth-century trade could get an early crop to customers who were hungry for something fresh. Trains known as the Rhubarb Express took it towards London. The shed and the place matter as much as the colour. Today the protected name Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb ties the crop to a defined area and a way of growing it.

I’d choose slender stalks and cook them gently enough that some of the pieces keep their shape. You need a little sugar. Taste as you go, because that quick hit of acidity is what makes the rhubarb so good with custard or the butter in a tart. Availability usually runs through the winter into early spring, with growers and weather deciding the exact dates.

Bettys has written about using rhubarb from the Tomlinsons in Pudsey, including in a frangipane tart and a crumble topped with gingerbread crumbs. I’d ask what the shop or café has when the crop’s in. It’s a nice thread to follow from the grower’s dark shed to a tea room in York. Bettys’ account of the Tomlinsons and their rhubarb.

YORK CITY · FORGOTTEN BAKING

12. York’s spice cake: the forgotten trade of the city's bakers

In 1589, York’s bakers complained about poor widows making spice cakes. The detail caught me because it’s a glimpse of who could make money out of baking and who had the power to object. In 1660, John Gill of York was given permission to bake spiced cakes and his permission stopped there. Both records appear in the Yorkshire Historical Dictionary’s entry for spice cake.

I’d like to have seen what the customers got for their money. Food historian Peter Brears connects the tradition with currants, sugar and spices including mace, cloves and nutmeg. A richer, more fragrant bake depended on what a merchant or grocer could supply. In a baker’s hands, those ingredients turned an everyday trade into something worth regulating.

The records tell us who was baking and that there was a trade to protect. The exact proportions are harder to recover. If a baker tried a version today, I’d be curious about the source for the recipe and what they had to decide for themselves. It would be interesting to see how much scent you could get out of the mace and cloves while still leaving room for the fruit.

“Cake” does quite a lot of work in this story. I picture a rich fruit bake closer to a sweetened bread than a light sponge, but the surviving York records leave the texture open. How much sugar went in, when the fruit was added and how much spice a household could afford would have made an appreciable difference.

A reliably documented modern seller of this particular York spice cake is hard to find. It earns its place because it takes us into the city’s bakeries centuries before the big confectionery firms. Those widows must have made something their neighbours wanted to buy.

MODERN YORK · STREET FOOD

13. The Yorkshire pudding wrap: an old batter changes its job

I learnt to start a Yorkshire pudding wrap at the end that’s going to give way first. The gravy tends to find it before you do. A fold of browned batter around carved roast meat and stuffing makes a substantial lunch, especially when the vegetables still have a bit of bite. It’s a very York thing to carry away in paper now.

By 2017, The York Roast Co.’s YorkyPud wrap was drawing queues and attention online. What the business made popular here was the idea of taking the Sunday roast in one hand. You can put a date on that moment in York without having to settle who first wrapped a filling in a Yorkshire pudding.

The difficult bit is the batter. It needs to bend and still taste as though it’s been in a hot oven. If it’s too thick, the fold turns doughy. The slices of meat need to come apart with a bite and the gravy has to travel with them. There’s more thought in getting a roast to fit inside a pudding than you might give it credit for.

I’d get one when I want the substance of a roast and have time for lunch on the move. A Sunday pudding has its own good qualities, particularly the crisp bit where the gravy hasn’t reached. The wrap trades some of that crispness for a fold that keeps the whole lunch together.

The York Roast Co. is the place to look for its YorkyPud wrap. It’s a recent chapter in York’s food story, with a very old batter doing an entirely new job. Check the shop and the roast you want on the current menus.

YORKSHIRE CUSTOM · AN UNEXPECTED PAIRING

14. Fruit cake and Wensleydale: the cheese that belongs beside the pudding

I remember taking a little cheese after a mouthful of fruit cake and immediately wanting to try the two together. The cake was dark and close with fruit. The Wensleydale had a fresh, slightly sharp crumble that cleared the sweetness from my mouth. It was an unexpectedly good reason to cut another small slice.

Joseph Lucas was already writing about Yule cake and Christmas cheese in Nidderdale in 1871. It’s a glimpse of how festive baking and farm cheese could come to the table together in Yorkshire. I like the thought that a custom can be old in a household and new on a tea-room menu. Bettys dates its own serving of the two together to the early 1980s in its account of fruit cake and cheese.

Give me a plain Wensleydale with this. There’s enough dried fruit in the cake, and a mild cheese lets the little contrast of salt and dairy freshness come through. A stronger blue makes a very different mouthful. I’d try a piece of the cake on its own first, then use about as much cheese as you can keep on a forkful.

It’s a good pairing to make for yourself. Start with a fruit cake whose fruit you can actually see and a cheese you can ask the maker’s name for. Let the cheese lose its chill. A small bite will tell you whether you want a crumbly wedge or something softer and richer, and you’ve the rest of the slice to settle the question.

For a York afternoon, the cheese counter in Clifton is one lead. A bakery or tea room can supply the fruit cake. Ask about the pairing if you’d like it served together, as menus change. This is one tradition I’d just as happily try from two little parcels at home.

HISTORIC YORKSHIRE · A LOST FEAST

15. The Yorkshire Christmas pie: a whole dinner hidden inside another

The Yorkshire Christmas pie starts to make sense when you picture the size of the kitchen. Several birds had to be boned, seasoned and fitted inside one another. The larger ones included goose and turkey, with more game tucked into the spaces around them. Somebody had to raise a crust big enough to take the lot. Hannah Glasse calls it a Yorkshire Christmas-Pye.

The standing pastry had a job to do. It kept a large filling together and helped protect it on the way to the table or during a journey. Pies like this were sent as gifts, including to London. Imagine the amount of butter and time that went into a present your host had to work out how to cut. Historical accounts of the Yorkshire pie.

What interests me is the work in that kitchen. A cook needed to know how to take the bones out cleanly, season the birds and judge when the middle would be cooked. The eighteenth-century households that could afford the meat and labour were making a display of their resources. Much of the accomplishment belonged to the people doing the boning and baking.

A modern raised game pie gives you one part of the idea. If someone made a version of Glasse’s pie, I’d want to know which birds went in and how the cook adapted the old instructions. The remarkable thing is how the different meats were packed and cooked together, and what a slice would have shown of all that work.

A York address serving that particular historical pie is elusive. I’d read the recipe for the pleasure of seeing what it asked of the cook, and give a modern butcher’s pie its own due. The old Christmas pie tells us what a Yorkshire household with a great deal to spend could put on the table.

YORK INSTITUTION · TEA-ROOM CULTURE

16. Afternoon tea at Bettys: how a Swiss idea acquired a Yorkshire accent

The room above Bettys in St Helen’s Square owes something to a trip across the Atlantic. Frederick Belmont, the Swiss founder, travelled on the Queen Mary in 1936 and came home with ideas for his York tea room. The Art Deco interior still gives you a way to see what caught his eye on board. The opening on 1 June 1937 is recorded in Bettys’ history of its York branch.

I like a tea where you reach for a small sandwich and end up giving the scone most of your attention. The crumb should still have some warmth and a pot of tea has to last through the sweet part. The stand and the room can make you slow down. The baking gives you a reason to stay there.

There are two ways to have afternoon tea at the York branch. The traditional café tea is a walk-in choice, useful if you’re in the square and have time to wait for a table. The two services have their own menus. For the more elaborate one and time in the upstairs room, book the Belmont Room.

The Belmont Room is on the first floor and Bettys says there’s no lift. Check the arrangements for the café before you go if you need step-free access. If you mostly want the baking, the shop is where I’d get a Fat Rascal and take my time over it later.

What stays with me about the York tea room is the mix. There’s Yorkshire baking and a Swiss confectioner’s idea of how it should be served, in a room with a bit of an ocean liner about it. Afternoon tea was already a familiar British ritual. This is one of the places where it acquired a York address and a story of its own.

THE COUNTRYLOOK FIELD GUIDE

Where to Taste, Buy and Experience York’s Food

The Countrylook field guide

Here’s where I’d go for the foods above. A small tart from a bakery can tell you as much about York’s food as a long lunch. There are shops for something to take home, two different ways into the chocolate story and a Sunday pudding to sit down for. If you’re after one particular thing, check the current menu or stock before setting out.

PLACE TO EXPERIENCE · 01 / 09

Thomas the Baker — for a Yorkshire curd tart

What to buy. A Yorkshire curd tart. I’d start with a small one and give the pastry and the curd a moment each. The pleasure is how little it takes to get from the crumble of the base to that soft filling with its currants.

Thomas the Baker makes curd tarts as a regular part of its range. The baker describes where it gets several of its ingredients in Yorkshire, which is a nice bit of the story to take with you. This is a bakery stop for something you can carry away, and I’d ask what’s available on the day if you’re going specially.

Where. The central shops include King’s Square on Church Street and 5–7 Market Street. There’s also a branch at 25 Bishopthorpe Road. Find your branch.

PLACE TO EXPERIENCE · 02 / 09

Bettys, St Helen's Square — for the Fat Rascal and Yorkshire tea-room tradition

What to try. A Fat Rascal from the shop, or the café’s traditional afternoon tea if you’d like to stay. The curd tart is worth asking for if it’s the bake you came for. A rhubarb dish is a seasonal possibility, especially when the forced crop comes in.

I’d buy the Fat Rascal on its own if I wanted to see what Bettys does with fruit and peel. For a longer afternoon, the café tea is walk-in and there can be a queue. Reserve the Belmont Room for the upstairs setting and its separate menu. Bettys says there’s no lift to that room.

Where. 6–8 St Helen’s Square, York. Check the café and shop. Book the Belmont Room.

PLACE TO EXPERIENCE · 03 / 09

The Pie Shop & Deli — for Wensleydale with a story

What to buy. Ask for Curlew Dairy’s Yoredale and Kit Calvert Old-Style Wensleydale. The Clifton deli names both on its cheese list.

This is the stop I’d make to bring two versions of the same cheese home. Ask what’s on the counter that day and how long each has been matured. Yoredale can have a softer feel and a refreshing tang. For fruit cake I’d get a little plain crumbly Wensleydale as well, so you can decide over a slice which you like best.

Where. 65 Clifton, York, outside the central shopping streets. For a particular maker, check current stock after looking at the cheese list.

PLACE TO EXPERIENCE · 04 / 09

The Rose & Crown — for Yorkshire pudding with Sunday lunch

What to eat. A Sunday roast with a Yorkshire pudding. I’d look for the crisp bit of the pudding that keeps its shape against the gravy. It’s a pleasure that makes most sense when you can sit down and give the whole plate a bit of time.

The Rose & Crown publishes a Sunday menu. Check what’s roasting that week and book if you have a particular time in mind. For a roast you can carry away, The York Roast Co. lists its YorkyPud wrap. That’s the one to try if you’re curious about how the batter holds up folded around meat and gravy.

Where. The Rose & Crown is at 13 Lawrence Street. The York Roast Co. has shops at Stonegate and Low Petergate. The Rose & Crown’s Sunday menu. The York Roast Co.’s shop menus.

PLACE TO EXPERIENCE · 05 / 09

The Blue Bell — for a pork pie and a Yorkshire pint

What to try. A York Pie Co. pork pie with a pint of Rudgate Ruby Mild. The pub names both on its list. I’d put a little English mustard beside the pie and see how the malt in the mild works with the seasoned pork.

The Edwardian rooms are small, which is part of the appeal if there are two of you and you can get a seat. The Blue Bell is for adults, and groups need prior agreement. It’s worth reading the house rules if you’re planning the stop for other people.

Where. 53 Fossgate, York. See the ales and pies. Read the house rules.

PLACE TO EXPERIENCE · 06 / 09

York Cocoa Works — for chocolate made in York

What to book. The Manufactory Tasting Journey. You can follow the steps from cocoa bean to finished chocolate and taste examples from different origins. It’s the one I’d choose if you’re curious about how roasting and making alter what ends up on your tongue.

The guided session takes about 45 minutes to an hour. Book the session you want. With less time, go to the café for a drinking chocolate or the shop for a bar to take away. The darker drinks are a handy way to follow your own taste for how much bitterness you like with the sweetness.

Where. 10 Castlegate, York. Check times and book the tasting.

PLACE TO EXPERIENCE · 07 / 09

York's Chocolate Story — for the city's confectionery history

What to book. The guided tour about York’s confectioners and the sweets that came out of their businesses. The attraction includes demonstrations and tastings.

Go for the factory stories if it’s the people and inventions that stayed with you from the food list. It’s a chance to put the familiar wrappers back into the city that produced them. I’d give the time to Cocoa Works instead if what you most want is to follow how cocoa beans become chocolate today.

Where. King’s Square, York. Check tour times and tickets.

PLACE TO EXPERIENCE · 08 / 09

Shambles Market — for food trading in the heart of the city

What to look for. Working food stalls in the market and a pork pie to take away just off it. There’s a nice connection between the old butchers’ shelves on the Shambles and a shop selling a pie on the same street today.

The market is a good place to see what the traders have brought in, from produce to cooked food. For a particular pie, I’d go to the Shambles Sausage & Pie Company at number 45 on the Shambles. The shop describes its classic pork pie as made with coarsely cut, lightly cured pork and finished with jelly. You can take it away and give the pastry and the filling a taste together.

Where. Find the market between the Shambles and Parliament Street. Check the market details. Find the pie shop at 45 Shambles.

PLACE TO EXPERIENCE · 09 / 09

Lottie Shaw's — for Yorkshire parkin to take home

What to buy. A Yorkshire parkin from Lottie Shaw’s. The maker uses oatmeal, treacle and ginger and gives the cake time to settle. If you’ve ever cut a parkin a little too soon, this is a useful way to see what the wait does.

This is a producer in wider Yorkshire and the direct order is the dependable lead. The maker calls the resting stage letting the cake “come again”. I’d take a piece with tea and look for what happens when the soft treacle and that little grain of oatmeal reach you together.

Where to buy. Order from the wider Yorkshire producer. Check the parkin and current ordering options.

COUNTRYLOOK · THE DRINKS CABINET

Six drinks. Six stories.

Six drinks that tell you something about York and the county around it.

I’ve put a Fossgate pint beside the tea, chocolate and newer drinks that are made in York and just beyond it. Each has a particular reason for being here. A cocoa drink takes you back to an old trade. A glass of wine takes you out to a field near Nun Monkton.

SCROLL OR SWIPE TO EXPLORE ALL SIX   →

DRINK 01 / 06

1. Ruby Mild — the overlooked pleasure of Yorkshire ale

The drink. Rudgate Ruby Mild. I like the first sip of a dark mild when the malt gives you a little toast and a nutty finish. The colour can look imposing in the glass. The pleasure here is how easily the next sip follows.

Rudgate began brewing in 1992 in an old ammunition building at the former Marston Moor airfield, near Tockwith. The Blue Bell lists Ruby Mild as a regular beer. With a cold pie and a little mustard beside it, you have a good reason to see what a malty pint can do. The brewery explains where its name came from in its account of the site and the Roman road.

Where. 53 Fossgate. The Blue Bell’s ales and pies.

DRINK 02 / 06

2. Brew York — a modern chapter in the city's brewing history

The drink. Ask what’s on from Brew York and pick two small pours if available. I like to start with something that lets me taste the grain, then move to a beer where the hops leave a brighter finish.

The brewery started on Walmgate in 2016, with production later expanded to Osbaldwick. The original site gives you a way into that newer part of the city’s brewing story. The tap list changes and the bar is where I’d ask which current beer best shows what the brewer was trying to do.

Where. Walmgate, York. Check what’s pouring and whether a brewery tour is running at Brew York.

DRINK 03 / 06

3. Drinking chocolate — the beverage that helped build an industry

The drink. A drinking chocolate with enough cocoa to leave something behind after the sweetness. I remember liking the first cup that had a little bitterness at the end. It made me take the next sip more slowly.

Cocoa was part of York’s trade before the bars people now recognise. Rowntree’s sold it to drink, and Henry Isaac Rowntree backed donkey-drawn coffee carts as a practical temperance project. York Cocoa Works offers several strengths today, including a 70% drinking chocolate if you want to see how much cocoa flavour you like. The Rowntree Society on cocoa, coffee carts and temperance.

Where. 10 Castlegate. York Cocoa Works’ drinking chocolates.

DRINK 04 / 06

4. Tea — a Yorkshire ritual with international ingredients

The drink. A pot of Bettys Tea Room Blend. The maker blends Assam and African teas for a rich cup. I like a black tea with enough body to keep its flavour after I’ve had a bite of something buttery.

York’s connection is in the shops and the habit of stopping for tea. Samuel Tuke was one of the city’s tea dealers before the family business became part of the Rowntree story. At Bettys, a pot with a Fat Rascal is the first thing I’d choose if I only had half an hour once I was seated. You can also buy the blend to make at home.

Where. St Helen’s Square. Bettys York.

DRINK 05 / 06

5. York Gin — local spirit, international botanicals

The drink. York Gin London Dry. Juniper gives it its backbone. The maker also uses lemon peel, coriander, orris and other spices. I’d start with the dry gin because you can get a sense of where the citrus ends and the spice starts.

The name London Dry describes a style. This gin is made in York, where the company says it distils, bottles and labels its range. The botanicals point farther afield, which is part of the interest of tasting something made in the city. The central shop offers tasters. For a booked experience, use the distillery address on your ticket.

Where. The shop is at 12 Pavement. The distillery experiences are in the grounds of Middleton’s Hotel. York Gin’s shop and visit information.

DRINK 06 / 06

6. Yorkshire Heart — wine grown beyond the city

The drink. A wine grown at Yorkshire Heart in Nun Monkton. The vineyard’s Solaris is an interesting one to ask about. The maker describes the natural version as having grapefruit and cider-apple notes, with a crisp finish. Ask which bottling and vintage are on the list.

The growers began experimenting with vines in 2000 and developed the vineyard outside York. I’d book a tour for the chance to see where the grapes ripen and ask what that particular year gave the winemaker to work with. The glass makes more sense when you can put it beside the vines.

Where. Pool Lane, Nun Monkton. Check Yorkshire Heart’s tour and tasting dates.