The You do Yuzu at home kit throws together enough bao buns and gyoza for an evening of gluttony along with a couple of bespoke beers from Brew York to enjoy with the fruits of your labour. Having had the pleasure of Yuzu food both eaten in and at home, I had a good baseline to understand how my efforts would measure up as I set about unboxing my evening’s bounty. The packaging is as smart as you’d expect, with everything neatly fitted together in a diminutive package and beers chilled ready to go, so it wasn’t long before we were up and running with our dinner. Getting the six baos together doesn’t take much in the way of skill, heating through the pork filling in a pan while bringing the buns up to temperature in a steaming basket; a process easily substituted for a blast in the microwave if your kitchen is less cluttered with kit such as steaming baskets than mine. With that done, we popped the gyozas into the pan we’d used for the meat, after a quick wipe, for them to develop crispy bases while we assembled our baos.

The finished baos were variable in standard of presentation to some degree, though improved from first to last effort, reflecting the delicacy of the job the professionals do day in, day out. There was more filling provided than I could cram into all the buns and I think I did a reasonable job of making them attractive enough to wolf down pretty quickly. Inevitably, presentation is going to vary in the final products between recipients but there’s everything you need here for an entertaining evening putting your own spin on your Yuzu fix. Everything tasted indistinguishable from the delivery options and this “You do Yuzu” kit represented a nice saving on the usual take out prices.

Yuzu has done a brilliant job of identifying and developing its niche over the last tough year. Their partnership with Brew York looks set to flourish with them also collaborating in Leeds and Pocklington and, while takeaway demand is bound to drop in the short term as we enjoy our freedoms, the temptation to get yourself a treat at home isn’t going anywhere. You do Yuzu is another way to enjoy their delicious and great value dishes that puts a different and fun spin on things.

Disclaimer: PR product

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The Blue Barbakan is the relatively recent expansion and relocation of The Barbakan, the name changing when it took on the premises formerly occupied by The Blue Bicycle, which never reopened after the 2015 floods. The Blue Barbakan has been, regardless of location, a favourite of the independent food scene in York for many years, winning fans for its hearty portions of well realised regional dishes. I’ve been many times over the years and never been disappointed, even on a recent trip during which they had to navigate a power cut in the middle of service! I obviously leapt at the chance to try The Blue Barbakan Takeaway.

The Blue Barbakan Takeaway is available for collection or delivery through Just-Eat, though be sure to check the restaurant’s social media for offers should you order directly. At the moment that includes three courses for £20, easily one of the best value at home meals in York right now. Our delivery arrived as promised, piping hot and ready to get stuck into. To start with, we shared a platter of ham and sausage with pickles and still-warm caraway bread and a portion of their legendary pierogi, filled with spinach in this instance with a few more pickles scattered across and a soured cream dip. Obviously cold ham travels just fine but thankfully the pierogi made it in one piece too and were indistinguishable from those served in the restaurant despite the journey.

Potato pancake with goulash is one of my favourite dishes at The Blue Barbakan and the transition to my dining room was smooth, not sacrificing any of the depth of flavour in the goulash or the well judged crust on the pancake that really edges it up the priority list when ordering from The Blue Barbakan Takeaway. Desserts at The Blue Barbakan have always been strong and both the cheese cake and salted caramel tarts that arrived packed in plenty of sugar highs in portions that were big enough to keep us going into the following day.

Short of sending someone to wash up after, there’s not a lot that The Blue Barbakan could do to improve this meal. Dining in their restaurant is a convivial experience that offers good value, great consistency and top notch food and they’ve done a great job of transplanting everything they can into food to enjoy at home. It’s certainly whetting my appetite for a return to the restaurant and I absolutely recommend tiding over your restaurant cravings with a treat from The Blue Barbakan.

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Ambiente has become embedded as a firm favourite in the city thanks to its well judged balance of accessibility and value that doesn’t lead it to skimp on quality. I’ve eaten at both of the York branches many times over the years and can’t recall anything in the way of disappointment, so the news of their developing at home offering was welcome. This Dine at Home Family Feast comes in at £50 and is made up of five tapas dishes of your choosing from a selection and a paella kit that’s intended to feed a family of four, give or take making allowances for appetite. That price also includes a bottle of wine or a four pack of beer.

I think it’s fair to say that in some regards, tapas is a concept that lends itself extremely well to reheating at home but I certainly wouldn’t say the same about paella, something that in my experience doesn’t take well to reheating. To dodge that potential mis-step the paella comes presented in kit form, requiring a bit of engagement to bring to the table. Thankfully that doesn’t involve anything too taxing and presents the perfect opportunity to pop the accompanying tapas dishes in the oven. The paella is simple to prepare, really just involving combining a few bags of ingredients with some rice and water so everything comes to the table along with a glass of wine with minimal fuss.

As predicted, Ambiente at home hit all the notes that you’d expect from Ambiente, the selection of dishes doing everything I hoped. I should point out that the quantities were certainly generous, comfortably stretching to four portions (two meals for two people). The tapas dishes featured Ambiente staple “Albondigas”, pork & beef meatballs in tomato, chorizo and olive sauce, blue cheese and walnut stuffed mushrooms, shredded chicken with peppers and spices, roast aubergine stuffed with feta and some cubes of tender pork belly. With a bit of bread to mop up the sauces, this quintet made a very decent meal for two in itself and felt very much like a meal in Ambiente, even if it did brutally expose the cheapness of our crockery once again.

The paella also turned out very convincingly, the vegetarian version opted for here being not missing any meat or seafood elements. A generous hit of saffron helped things along and the result was another comfortingly flavoursome and hearty meal that gave a sense of occasion.

I’m not sure how much I like the term “new-normal”, its implication that the status quo we’d blundered our way to before was in some way normal but that’s certainly not to say I don’t want huge swathes of it back, with restaurants and hospitality predictably high in my list of priorities. This service from Ambiente is a welcome and accomplished glimpse back to some of the wonderful things we may have been guilty of taking a touch for granted a few months ago.

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

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Le Cochon Aveugle has a deservedly strong reputation both in York and nationally thanks to the efforts of owners Josh & Vicky Overington, who’ve created a gastronomical refuge that serves its tasting menu blind, to the delight and surprise of their customers. Not necessarily the easiest thing to translate to a home environment but, undaunted, it’s now possible to enjoy Josh’s deft touch in the comfort of your pyjamas, should you choose.

The format is similar to that which I enjoyed from Roots recently, a three course meal delivered to reheat at home which Cochon augment with a bottle of wine (or non-alcoholic alternative). This meal for two with wine comes in at £45 including delivery, an extremely fair price for food from a chef who showed so well on Great British Menu just a couple of years ago and whose establishment has been tipped to receive a Michelin star. Predictably enough it’s been selling rather well too, so I jumped to it when my diligently-set phone reminder went off.

Having successfully booked, the delivery arrived as promised. There’s not much specificity to the booking slots but with being in the house the default status, this is hardly an issue. Delivery was made onto our now semi-permanent delivery table in the corner of the porch and we were all set for the evening.

Everything was neatly & logically portioned and ready to go so a few hours later we were happily in the process of getting everything reheated for our meal. The first course was a soup of onion and cider along with Cochon sourdough bread rolls that paired up nicely with a Verdejo, coincidentally from sister establishment Cave Du Cochon. The bread gave the course substance, accenting the soup’s balance well and allowing each of the main elements to shine before we moved onto the main event of belly pork stuffed with sausage meat, apricot and breadcrumbs. This one was served with “Lentils Petit Salé” and green sauce that weren’t too taxing to get onto a plate, effectively being to get the pork into the oven on a hot enough heat to blister the skin into crackling while reheating the lentils in the microwave. We had to give the pork a few extra minutes to bring the skin to its full potential, an unavoidable variation from a domestic oven I suspect.

The green sauce and richly nuanced lentils really made the pork dish feel like a well developed main course in a good restaurant and gave the sense of delivering something it’d be very difficult to otherwise replicate in a home. Soft meat, well crisped skin and sharp sauce were all underpinned by that bed of lentils, which was further developed by spikes of silver skin onion.

The experience was polished off by a strawberry jelly topped with a fig leaf chantilly that was just the kind of light mouthful you’d want to finish on. All three courses did a great job of recreating a restaurant vibe in the home, though the washing up will always be lurking to puncture that illusion at some point! Forty five pounds for a three course meal and a bottle of wine of this standard is great value and a fantastic way to stay in touch with one of York’s best places to eat.

Times are hard for restaurants at the moment and this sort of meal presents a whole new set of challenges for chefs to meet, requiring that dishes can be reheated at home by amateurs with (let’s be honest) something of a mix of abilities. That’s no comment on the standard of this excellent meal, but there’s no practical way to replicate the intricacies of high end restaurant service in the home. That said, this is a new problem which suddenly has the attention of a whole host of talented chefs whose solutions I can’t wait to acquaint myself with. I’m sure Le Cochon Aveugle will remain at the vanguard of this and the speed with which they seem to be selling out just serves to further demonstrate the gap that closing restaurants has left in our lives.

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Rudy’s Pizza is situated on New Station Street right in the centre of the city in a former bike shop a conveniently short distance from the train station for a trip from York. It’s one of five restaurants based around Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool that, predictably enough, specialise in pizza. The space they’re serving in is airy and casual, successfully designing in a nice buzz on our lunchtime visit, which took place only a couple of weeks into their tenure in the building. Indeed it was hard to believe that their Leeds opening was so recent given how busy it was. They seemed to have adopted a strategy of giving over table service for reservations while keeping back counter seating for walk ins, a neat compromise.

We picked a sharing “Campana” platter to start the meal which gave us a selection of cured meats to distribute between us along with a generous helping of mozzarella and bread. Perhaps the salad could have done with one or two more sun-dried tomatoes, but this was a fine start to the meal, the wild boar salami in particular provoking a number of justifications as to relative deservedness of the last mouthfuls.

Obviously pizza was always going to be the centrepiece of this meal and thankfully lived up to our high expectations. We went for a Capricciosa and a Portobello, taking the suggestion for the latter to be a white pizza. Pizza toppings are pretty irrelevant if the standard of the base falls short, a fault end that proliferates amongst delivered pizzas which fall into the category of “guilty pleasures not to own up to”. The crusts at Rudy’s Pizza display a decent amount of blistering and char, making them more than just a a sideshow for toppings. Speaking of which, there was no evidence of scrimping here either. Just good quality ingredients left to their own devices in a super hot oven for a short period, given their best opportunity to shine. The combination of fresh vegetables and prosciutto with tomato on the Capricciosa sang a good tune while the Portobello hit entirely different notes with the lack of tomato setting it well apart from its companion pizza.

With none of the pizzas breaching £9 and that starter platter less than £8 this was cracking value, the addition of a couple of beers bringing the total to around £40. Rudy’s Pizza is a great addition to the Leeds food scene that deserves to become a regular for anyone who enjoys decent pizza. Sadly, as of today that can’t be the case. When I started writing this, takeaway was still available but such is the pace of change at the moment, that’s no longer the case. Over the coming weeks and months, it’ll become clearer how food and hospitality can exist most effectively in these disconcerting times, by which point I’m confident many of us will fancy a pizza. I don’t doubt that the guys at Rudy’s are extremely anxious for both their own and their industry’s future. As ways emerge for us to show support, we must make sure we do so in any way we can.

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

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