A few Fridays later and we found ourselves parked up in a multi-storey car park in the centre of Beverley (much more reasonable than parking in York) and started to explore. I’d been told that it felt like a “mini-York” and this certainly was the case, with a few quaint streets and a Minster to enhance the impersonation. An hour or two wandering was a very pleasant experience and we noted a few places to return to, in particular I’ve never, as I suppose should be obvious, been to the Pig & Whistle. Firepit Beverley is part of the new Flemingate development, also home to that car park, which is easily accessed at the edge of the city centre and features a largely predictable mix of retail and leisure businesses. Firepit itself is a smokehouse and sports bar that augments the food offering with games such as darts, pool and shuffleboard as well as featuring a wall-dominating screen to really push every last pixel of sport into your eyeball.

The food offering was rather meat heavy as one might expect and we took the cowards’ way out of ordering a sharing platter with a couple of sides to reduce the mental burden of any decision making. The environment has some cool bits of Americana dotted about and feels lively enough without becoming a distraction from the food, if that’s the focus of your visit. Our platter arrived smartly enough and was every bit the meaty indulgence I had expected. Laden with ribs, chicken legs, beef brisket, smoked sausage, pulled pork, chicken wings and chorizo this was a serious feed and called into question the necessity of the mac cheese we had ordered, though chips to punctuate the meatiness were a must have.

There was little chance of us polishing off the lot (don’t worry, the leftovers came home) so we made sure to sample everything and get a good sense of the standard, with the pulled pork and brisket being stand-out and everything hitting the target admirably. The smoked sausage had the promised good whack of smoke and the wings were messily indulgent. Looking back at the menu now I realise we were missing some ‘slaw and pickles that would have been a welcome relief from the meat-fest but this was an incredibly generous serving for £35. We added some creamy mac cheese for even more indulgence and left very full and very happy.

In truth a sports bar such as Firepit Beverley is not my natural habitat, but for this dining experience, it felt rather appropriate. The dimly lit setting scattered with screens and dominated by that massive display and a few striking features including the front of a car and a seating area reminiscent of an airstream caravan hits the spot. There was a good buzz of people enjoying the shuffleboard and pool that would translate well to an evening and really motor on when a big event was on. I should go farther afield more often!

(Disclaimer – PR visit)

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Perfectly timed for the start of the British barbecue season, these courses are now running most weekends and let you get to grips with a number of BBQ classics in an attractive, previously under-utilised, outdoor space by the side of The Grand which looks up toward street level. Rather appropriately, the launch event was preceded by weather extreme enough to warrant a reassuring email to the effect that it would be going ahead. The team have done a great job of weather proofing the space though so there should be no worries about the great British weather intervening in your fun.

The launch event started with some hands on pizza dough stretching by way of illustrating the versatility of a barbecue with some members of the audience more successful than others. I dodged the public trial and just settled for a good look at the results. The second demonstration was rather more traditional as we were introduced to some beautiful ribeye steaks. These were cooked back to back on gas and traditional charcoal barbecues, both delivering bags of flavour and smoky character.

I’ve not gone through a course with Marc Williams yet but it’s clear he’s extremely knowledgeable, approachable and enthusiastic. The short demos that we enjoyed were certainly enough to pique my interest in this intriguing new concept. Weber Academy at The Grand Cookery School courses are available to book now.

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I didn’t fancy dining alone given the likely portion size from this sort of dining experience, so quickly grabbed a friend who was finishing work in Leeds at about the right time and made tracks with them to settle in for feeding. The bar was as spotless as one might expect a venue only a few weeks into its life to be and the friendly front of house guys quickly had us seated in a booth to one side of the main bar area with menus in hand.

We grabbed some onion rings to pick at while waiting for mains of the beef rib and a smokin’ platter that featured smoked wings, tortillas, crab taquito, beef empanadas and breaded shrimp with mango puree and sweet chilli to dip everything in. Before the server left, we exhibited no restraint at all by also ordering some grilled corn to have on the side. The onion rings arrived almost instantly along with a couple of beers from the broad selection on offer and it was very satisfying to dredge the crisp batter through some mayonnaise which didn’t leave one’s hands unpleasantly greasy.

Our chosen meats arrived after a similarly brief pause, unfussily presented on a mixture of plates and slates. We worked through a few bits from the sharing platter first, enjoying the chicken wings and breaded shrimp with the mango puree. The tortilla bites let out a pleasing crunch while the beef empanadas and crab taquitos were less successful, not letting the main ingredients reach full potential, the crab in particular struggling to fight its way past the sweetcorn it shared space with. The beef rib, scattered with sliced chilli, had been well cooked and didn’t require too much effort to separate into bite sized chunks that packed in plenty of the promised smokiness. Having been lucky enough to enjoy some really special beef rib in my time this was always going to suffer a little by comparison, but there’s little to be disappointed in here for £12.95 in a buzzing bar centrally located in Leeds. Corn on the cob came with a very well judged hint of char and was a welcome note of sweetness at the side of the meal.

As seems to be inevitable when eating anywhere that trades on the promise of good smoked meats, we exited with a good amount of leftovers ready to see my friend and his partner through a hearty lunch the following day. It’s not unfair to say that Smokin’ Bar isn’t the kind of dining experience I go out of my way to enjoy, but that’s not to say it fails to hit its mark. I was impressed by the service, sensibly priced and broad drinks list and lively atmosphere. For a beer each and all that food, we’d have seen a little bit of change from fifty quid, which seems like a fair deal for dinner for two in the centre of Leeds. Smokin’ Bar Leeds is set to be a buzzing place to hit for after work or weekend drinks.

Disclaimer: This is an impartial review of a complimentary meal.

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The course took place at Andy Annat’s house, the garden of which was predictably rammed with BBQ equipment. A pizza oven and tandoor supplemented the four other BBQs that were up and running when we arrived, one of which was gently smoking away with a pork joint to be ready later, while another was packed with bacon ready to get the day underway with breakfast, over which we met the rest of the course’s attendees.

After a first burst of butchery demonstration we set about making sausages, with two of the group co-opted into mixing their own sausage meat and using a sausage machine to stuff their sausages while the activity was accompanied by many double entendres and bad jokes. After realising that making up strings of sausages isn’t as easy as Andy Annat makes it look, we moved into a chat about the relative merits of cooking on planks against salt blocks. With examples of both of those in place on one of the BBQs, I set about making up some bacon-wrapped onion rings to contribute toward lunch, which would also feature “dirty steaks”.

We were cooking with natural lump wood charcoal, so we had no worries about it being adulterated with any accelerant or chemical, and that meant that we could just throw a bunch of steaks directly onto the coals. After a decent interval for them to take on some smoke, they just needed the coals knocking off and a coating of Bovril butter to bring out the quality of the meat. With that done, we were ready to serve up lunch and get stuck into the fruits of the morning’s work and enjoy fantastically cooked examples of everything I’ve talked about along with a selection of salads and some maple- and pecan-drenched sweet potatoes that had been cooked in the coals.

The afternoon was spent over a series of more butchery demonstrations that showed, in great detail, where particular cuts of meat come from, along with more chats about technique and the BBQ scene in the UK and around the world. Andy has some cracking anecdotes to share too that I don’t doubt are, deservedly, well practised. If you have the chance, ask him the one about armed response intervention and the Queen, or about messing with a prominent food critic’s potatoes on live TV.

The day continued at breakneck speed, taking in mackerel, BBQ Yorkshire puddings, BBQ garlic flatbread, lemons injected with butter and slow smoked pork that had been cooking in the background all day. With the need for something sweet to complete proceedings, a bunch of pineapple strips were covered in rum, cinnamon and sweetness before being seared and served.

The cost of the day was £120 and included your apron from the day, all you could eat through the day and all you could drink from the cask of local real ale squatting in the corner from which you could serve yourself. That’s a complete bargain if taken in isolation, and even more so if compared to other well known local cookery schools. The next course will be a BBQ take on “The 12 days of Christmas”, which sounds like a suitably left field subject for a day with Andy Annat. I’ll be checking my penny jar…

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In the year or so that he’s been in residence above the Blues Bar across in Harrogate, Andy has firmly established his spot as the place to go to for good quality BBQ at sensible prices in a friendly and informal environment. (Being honest, there’s only so formal one could hope to be with a blues band under your feet.) So it was a pleasure to get a phone call asking us back to take a peek at how the menu had developed.

The signature multi-tier platters are still very much in evidence – presented similarly to a large, meaty cream tea – so it was with great anticipation that three tiers of pleasure made their way to our table after a good chat with the man himself. We had enjoyed inventive descriptions of whole walls of fire cooking being used to cook entire spatchcocked pigs, so the inventiveness and fun on the table hardly came as a shock.

Everything we were blessed with was superb, it was almost too much to list but… pork rump, chicken wings, risotto stuffed peppers, chorizo and pulled pork lasagne, gambas, chips, crayfish macaroni cheese, deep fried crayfish mac cheese balls, beefburger with kale and strong cheese, salads (which we might have unfairly neglected), beef kofta skewers, baked potato bombs wrapped in bacon, bacon-wrapped onion rings, bacon-wrapped corn cob and halibut all hit the spot. If pushed to pick highlights, I’d go for the pork rump or lasagne, or maybe the crayfish mac’ cheese, or maybe halibut… you get the idea.

As ever with a trip to the see Andy, you come away with enough leftovers to see you through the following day’s lunch (unless you’re impressively gluttonous) so we enjoyed a few moments of repose on the way back to the train station while digesting the events of the evening, both literally and figuratively. The food is reliably superb and Andy’s a great fun host so I can’t recommend treating yourself to an evening with a mad man strongly enough.

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Espresso roast beef short rib from Andy Annat at the Green Room was stunningly moist, boldly flavoured and just the thing on a cold January evening

White asparagus stuffed with crab meat and topped with caviar was served between courses at the Star at Harome but a definite highlight of the meal.

While in New York, we checked out the famous Katz’s Deli and tried a “Reuben” and a Pastrami on Rye. Simply some of the tenderest meat ever encountered.

A short hop to the other side of America found us eating sushi at Ryokos in San Francisco. Rejecting a menu and asking for the chef’s suggestions worked very well.

Andrew Pern’s character runs through Mr P’s Curious Tavern and contributes to delightfully unique dishes such as steak tartare with brown sauce ice cream. Silly, in the best possible way.

This delicately spiced sea trout at the Park made brilliant use of peanut and lime to bring it to life.

Liquid Nitrogen Mojito? Says it all really, courtesy of The Grand.

The Man Behind the Curtain was ludicrous, inspirational and sensational from start to finish. Definitely one of my highlights of 2016.

This Bramley Apple Cheesecake from Northcote’s collaboration with the Star Inn the City was exquisitely presented.

Giles’ highlight of the year
My best meal of the year must have been at The Star Inn Harome, not just because all the food is seasonal and locally produced. There is a menu to cater for every wallet from bar food to an a la carte menu and an amazing selection of local beer, as well as a large local cheese board. I have never been disappointed in any of the menu options from the venison burger, to the posh prawn cocktail and the rockpool, not forgetting the large selection of game and seafood.

Claire’s highlights of 2016
There were so many memorable food moments in 2016 that it’s almost impossible to choose. As a home cook I love discovering new ingredients. This year two fell onto my radar: sharp goat curd from Ribblesdale Cheese and British grown pulses from Suffolk based Hodmedods.
I have the great British weather to thank for my second favourite food moment. The unusually mild temperature throughout 2016 made this an excellent year for foraging. From elderflower to crab apples there was a plentiful crop for crumbles, jams and fruit gin. A busy year all round.

Grace’s highlights of the year
2016 for me was time-rich, so became a year of proper home cooking and baking. The York foodie Twitter community were there at 11pm when I needed to know where I could buy almond paste, (Tulliver’s on Colliergate). I jazzed up a cake with some edible glitter from Barnitts and Henshelwoods were reliable for vanilla pods. I’m thankful that York hasn’t been cleansed of independent shops, otherwise my baking would lack all the best ingredients!

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First things first, don’t worry, those signature multi-tiered platters are still very much in evidence, but there’s now a greater, additional, focus on providing a large variety of smaller tapas-style plates to satisfy smaller appetites and patrons of the bar downstairs wanting a snack to sustain the evening. While the core of the menu is still meat heavy, there’re a bunch of new vegetarian options too, alongside fish such as crayfish mac & cheese, cajun blackened salmon and soft shell crab. As far as variety for veggies goes, highlights include okra fries, crispy fried pickles and onion bhaji.

If you’re in for the long haul then Chateaubriand makes its debut on the menu alongside beef Wellington but, for me, it’s hard to stray from the platters. The opportunity to get so much variety, and inevitably tomorrow’s lunch, is too much to resist. If there is something specific you’re desperate for then the team will always do their best and there’re now set options to add more expensive cuts to the variety for a set cost.

As always, the samples served at The Blues Bar last night were superb and the canapés varied and tasty. My only ‘complaint’ is that there were enough people there to finish the lot off and I have to cook my own lunch today!

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The Blues Bar is a live music venue a short walk from Harrogate station with a decent selection of real ales and a space upstairs that previously offered Egyptian food. As we arrived early on a Wednesday evening, it was inhabited by musicians starting to get set up for the evening and post-work drinkers apparently looking for somewhere uncomplicated to smooth the rough edges left by the day’s travails. We hustled ourselves upstairs to “The Green Room” ready to occupy a booth. I quickly hustled back down the stairs when I realised that’s where the conveniences are, something that drew recent criticism on a well-known review site. Each to their own.

The Andy Annat at The Blues Bar menu promised all manner of carnivore’s treasures, but a surprising number of intriguing vegetarian options too. You’ll have to excuse me from sharing the menu detail here, but as it’s still under development it’d be potentially mis-leading. I don’t doubt the dishes we had will remain though (they better had do!). Starting with light bites of salmon rolled around cream cheese on crispy toast bites topped with a smear of caviar, we quickly decided that deciding was something we wouldn’t be able to do. Delegating responsibility for choice to our host, we awaited our first dish: buffalo wings served with three sauces of varying spice. These were authentically impossible to eat with any dignity and beautifully tender while the dipping sauces all gave their own character to the bite. Even the hottest, about which we were cautioned, didn’t sacrifice flavour for aggression. Taking full advantage of the essential finger bowl, we girded our loins for the main event.

A lengthy plank was slid down the centre of our table after a decorous pause and we forced ourselves to take stock of the marvellous situation in which we’d found ourselves. Beef rib, lamb kleftico and veal rump formed the spine of the proposal while chips, pork scratchings and salads teased our attention from the sidelines. Unsure where to start, I popped a pork scratching in my mouth to buy thinking time and immediately felt assured my sky-high expectations would be met: taking a mere 16 hours to produce and without a hint of the cloying fat found in their pub-based brethren, the morsel melted away leaving a delightful pork flavour. Chips dusted in bacon powder were light, and in retrospect, I’d have held onto the sauces from the buffalo wings to give them another dimension.

When photographs were done and self-control exhausted, we dived on the veal rump. Accompanied by Mediterranean vegetables that were char-grilled to perfection, the meat was wonderfully tender; neither too powerfully smoked or cooked beyond a delicate pink, the texture was simply beyond comparison. It’s not exactly a spoiler to reveal that we’d been presented with a lot of food, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to hear there were leftovers to take home. I think Mrs YoaF articulated it best when she took a bite roughly two hours later and just started laughing as she shouted “Holy ****! It’s not even hot any more, so how can it be that tender?!”.

The lamb, seasoned with garlic butter, hit similar chords of reverence as we marvelled at the texture. Perhaps the flavour wasn’t of the same revelatory standard of the veal, but in this company, that’s nothing at all to complain about. The meat was lean and justified its presence beyond doubt.

Of the three meats, I’ve waited to try and describe the beef short rib until last. I could trot out the usual superlatives about unctuous sauce, a beautifully smoked crust, meat falling apart even before the knife seems to come into contact with it and so on and it would be entirely true. It wouldn’t do it justice though. Suffice to say that the sauce perfectly balanced slightly bitter and slightly sweet notes and was of perfect consistency. This is a dish that will stay with me for a long time and form the basis of many, many recommendations.

To finish, we had a lemon pannacotta, about which I was able to finally pick fault. It was too big. I commented on social media afterwards that if your only complaint about a meal is that you can’t finish the dessert, then you’ve probably had a pretty decent evening. Killing time before the train home (only £8.40 return) we had a lengthy chat with Andy about his ambitions for Andy Annat at The Blues Bar. Taking his butchery skills as a chance to minimise produce costs, he wants this to remain as accessibly priced as possible (indeed the menu we looked at had mains starting at ten pounds) and not become exclusive. Sourcing great produce, training staff well and maintaining a friendly atmosphere while the food offers a sense of fun will be key to maintaining the success of this place, something I don’t doubt for a second it will be. It was a tremendous pleasure to visit and the second funds and schedule coincide, I’ll be paying a repeat visit.

Disclaimer: While this meal was complementary, all the opinions expressed are impartial. I was accompanied by Claire from http://greedywordsmith.com who said “Andy Annat’s food does not disappoint. The menu is carefully balanced to provide appetising options for both the committed carnivore and their vegetarian companions. I can’t comment on the visit without urging visitors to consider the incredible beef rib and its dark, alluring sauce. I will definitely be making a repeat visit.”

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Andy Annat is something of a barbecue legend, so it’s pretty fortunate to have him based in our region. His enthusiasm for barbecued meat is astonishingly infective and palpable in every conversation. His upcoming plans for Yorkshire Day are particularly ambitious and off (or rather on…) the wall. We should have some more details of that in our June ezine for you to disbelieve. Under the name ‘Crackerjack BBQ‘, Andy runs pop up nights like this.

Bagging a table on the first floor of the pub alongside a dog who could scarcely believe the potential of his evening, we settled into a wonderfully hopped pint and waited for the first leg of our meaty odyssey with BBQ Crackerjack.

Chicken was up first, with a delicate tandoori spice and a side of rice, onion bhaji and popadom. The onion bhaji was cooked to perfection, balancing crispy extremities with a cooked-through centre, while the chicken kicked its way through my (high) expectations with wonderful moistness. Thigh meat in particular was packed with flavour. Around this time we realised the potential magnitude of the task; two more meat courses of this size would certainly challenge our appetites, thankfully without entering into Man Vs Food territory.

Next up we headed to Greece for a lamb souvlaki. Skewered chunks of lamb exploded with flavour and moisture in the mouth while counterpointed against grilled garlic flatbread. Of the two flatbreads we shared, the more charred example had a greater depth of flavour, but this minor inconsistency was far from a big deal. With such a heavily meat-based menu, the danger would be a lack of differentiation between courses, but with both meats showing great depth of flavour and texture alongside carefully prepared and presented sides, everything was clearly in hands as expert as Mr Annat’s reputation would suggest.

Last meat course then. Enigmatically described as “Porkie Pie Ploughmans”, it was indeed telling porkies! If the evening was of a more pretentious nature it could have been described as ‘deconstructed’, but that wouldn’t give full credit to the commitment and skill on the plate. A couple of discs of pastry nodded toward that ‘pie’ description while sharply-dressed slaw cut against the smoke-infused meat.

Two hour apple and maple “big pit” pork was a perfect headline: meat dropping aside at the merest suggestion of a forking, infused with (not overpowered by) smoke and with a sweet glaze… beyond reproach. As with previous courses the quantities were generous, indeed challenging, so we bothered the staff for some foil and awaited dessert with the tiny amount of space remaining in our digestive systems.

A small plant pot filled with chocolate “Mouse” wore a layer of edible “soil” with a few shoots of cress reaching from it and a slightly redundant jelly snake recumbent around the rim. Crunching through the wonderful topping and letting the light mous(s)e dissolve in the mouth left a chocolate pebble sat in the bottom of the pot, handily plugging the hole in the base!

The price on all this? Twenty quid. One of the nicest parts was even still to come the following day: the leftover pork made a fantastic sandwich! Ridiculously cheap and in a fantastic venue, I can’t recommend enough getting yourself to one of these nights. It really is a cracker, whether you’re called Jack or not.

Disclosure: The food was complementary, though no editorial requests were made with regard to this piece.

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