Voted the Best Small Hotel in England 2020 by Visit England, Grays Court is celebrating yet another prestigious award with the announcement that their in-house restaurant, The Bow Room, has been awarded 3 Rosettes from The AA for their outstanding food offering and exceptional service.

“We set our sights high on both the quality of produce and service for The Bow Room. We wanted a fine-dining experience that would match the indulgent, yet relaxed and welcoming offer of our hotel, and thanks to our hard-working team we are achieving this. From the warm welcome and in-depth knowledge of the menu and wines shared with guests from our service team to the delightfully playful and intricate dishes coming from the kitchen, we are delighting guests – and I couldn’t be prouder.” Said Helen Heraty, owner of the multi-award-winning Grays Court.

The awarding of this third rosette from the AA puts The Bow Room into the top flight of restaurants in the city and firmly establishes the venue as one the best fine-dining experiences in York – something that Head Chef Adam Jackson and his dedicated team have worked hard to deliver.

“This accolade is a badge of honour for the whole team here at The Bow Room. The team and I work hard to ensure that every dish that crosses the pass is the very best it can be, offering complex and enjoyable taste combinations with a sense of theatre and wonder. Our Front of House Team, led by Alex Stainsby, ensure that we match our dishes with the perfect wine pairings to show them off to their full potential.  It is the total experience that we strive so hard for and it is great to be rewarded with this award in appreciation.” Added Adam, whose previous roles included chef patron of the 3 Rosette Park Restaurant in York & the head chef of the Black Swan Oldstead.

Guests at The Bow Room Restaurant at Grays Court are treated to a six-course taster menu, starting with drinks and canapes in the Long Gallery before heading to the dining room, which overlooks the garden and the city walls for a leisurely dining experience.

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Middlethorpe Hall is rich in history having been originally built in an attempt to establish a local businessman as a country gentleman. While I’m not sure how successful that attempt was, any failure couldn’t be blamed on the beautiful building which is set in 20 acres between York and Bishopthorpe Village. The red brick building certainly makes a statement as you approach its frontage from the car park with subtle lighting drawing you to the entrance. It looks every inch the archetypal country house hotel.

Any experience in a location like this is an opportunity to have a bit of an explore of the building so we started with drinks and canapés in a comfortable lounge while we took stock of the dishes that would confront us in the next room. The seven courses looked to be well judged and featured a selection of quality produce, as well it should at £75/head (the wine pairing is a very reasonable £35 on top).

The first couple of courses were white onion velouté which benefitted from savoury notes of coffee and parmesan before we were served a slice of rabbit and ham pressing with a black pudding bonbon and a good punch of mustard. This pair did a good job of comforting us into the heftier dishes and held up nicely against a Picpoul that was the first wine pairing. This was followed by a Sancerre to accompany a piece of salmon with spheres of cucumber for texture and freshness alongside notes of dill and horseradish.

Things got a little heavier with the next plate, featuring bold & meaty flavours from beef fillet, oxtail and truffle mac cheese. On drinks duty with this one was a Cabernet Sauvignon, fulfilling its role admirably alongside the strong flavours. There wasn’t huge subtlety or anything in the way of massive surprises on the plate but that’s not necessarily a prerequisite to enjoyment, of which we found plenty. It’s often the small details that make a dish memorable and here it was the crispy potato skins filled with a chive filling. I could have absent-mindedly picked at more of these for some hours.

The trio of sweet dishes that followed worked through a cucumber and elderflower sorbet, a “clementine” and a tiramisu. The sorbet did its job as you’d expect, punctuating savoury and sweet with a G&T granita assisting. Tiramisu finished the evening on an appropriately luxurious note along with a glass of sparkling Nyetimber, but the star of the section was the clementine paired with a Muscat of a similar shade. White chocolate and sorrel deposited sweetness and tang respectively to the deceptively light dish.

Middlethorpe Hall is a luxurious and memorable place for a dining experience which befits those elevated surroundings. Those surroundings also feature gardens and a spa, neither of which I timed my visit appropriately to sample but certainly offer the opportunity to extend a stay here to multiple days and indulgences. I’m very pleased to have ticked off a notable gap in my experience of fine dining in York with a delightful series of dishes.

Disclaimer: No charge was made for this meal. Opinions are impartial.

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I last visited The Park on Bootham a couple of years ago and was impressed with the attention to detail, flavour combinations and superb service, so thought it was long overdue a return trip, especially since the Park is now offering a Saturday lunch time service that offered the chance to introduce Baby Fork to fine dining with minimal potential for disrupting other people eating.

Marmaduke’s is a striking building that doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own grandeur. The entrance, tucked away just off the main drag of Bootham, leads into a comforting bar space with friendly service from the suitably unobtrusive and skilful front of house team. We discussed the potential for a pre-lunch drink, but deferred to the baby’s continuing sleep and opted to skip on to the food, a shame as the garden is a secluded and calm space that would have suited the sunny day perfectly.

The Park on Bootham has two spaces in which to dine. This lunch was served in the smaller of the two rooms, which are both welcoming and offer the right combination of privacy and conviviality in which to enjoy the occasion, in this case a three course menu for lunch. It goes without saying that no fine dining establishment would be caught with its trousers down by not offering bread and snacks before the documented courses began, and so we enjoyed some spectacular fresh bread with whipped marmite butter along with a miniature ‘Yorkshire Salad’ that dressed shallot and greens to much greater impact than I’ve ever enjoyed from a salad before. The bread was just as fresh and beautifully textured as my high expectations reached for, and the marmite butter was good enough to eat with a spoon.

The next snack before we got stuck into the main courses was a scallop accented with Jerusalem artichoke, pickled grapes and samphire with a crispy crumb that gave texture to the complementary flavours. It’d be hard to put that many of my favourite things on a plate and trigger any complaints, so of course there weren’t any as we enjoyed this superlative way to start a meal.

The first of the courses described on the menu was a meat dish, described with characteristic restraint as “Beef, Sesame, Broccoli, Peanuts”. I can see pickier diners preferring a more detailed break down, but I’m happy to take whatever comes from a chef as well regarded as Adam. What did arrive was a delicate portion of beef that anchored the course to the centre of the plate. Around this were identically sized red and white flourishes that sat under a garnish of sesame seeds, peanuts and crispy noodles. When finished with a light consommé, everything was left in healthy dialogue to make a superbly refined plate, taking full advantage of each element without leaving any flavour or texture overshadowed.

The second of the three courses called itself “Poussin, White Onion, Ham, Hen of the Woods’ and, again, pulled off the trick of bringing together a selection of strong flavours without letting a single one dominate. The slices of dauphinoise potato were a delicate highlight, the paper thin slices of potato layered with ham in quantities perfect to work with the sweet onion flavours, poussin and asparagus.

We’d opted to skip the cheese course, fearing noise from Baby Fork, so the experience finished with “Pineapple, Rum, Vanilla” elements which had been worked into a complex sandwich of crisp sweet shards separating sweet flavours and topped with a delicate quenelle. As with each of the previous courses, the theme here remained ‘balance’, with no element shouting louder than it should.

Each of these main dishes was paired with a superb wine that did everything asked of it in bringing more out of the food. In particular the 2013 South African Pinot Noir served with the beef teased out further complexity, further underlining the sense of cohesion in the menu. A San Franciscan Chardonnay triggered memories of a trip to California a couple of years ago while also providing ample support to the poussin.

The Park on Bootham remains one of the best fining dining restaurants in York. Its position in a hotel leaves it at risk of being overlooked, but everything we enjoyed for this lunch surpassed expectation, including Baby Fork and her continuing sleep. The three course menu is £35 with another £22 needed to grab the paired wines mentioned here. That’s a very fair price for food like this, and one that’s extremely likely to tempt you back for the seven course tasting menu.

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