Le Cochon Aveugle post lockdown

With fingers crossed and a healthy slug of vaccine for all, we seem now to be creeping slowly out of the strictures placed on our liberties over the last year or so and able to re-embrace what were once simple pleasures such as nipping to the neighbours for a cup of tea inside. Undoubtedly some…

Le Cochon Aveugle chez moi

As we find ourselves in yet another week of this interminable lockdown, the consumer appetite for meals out and the professional desire to meet that need continue to coincide in new services. We’ve been trying to focus on one treat a week and this time alighted on Le Cochon Aveugle, who have entered the fray…

Against the Grain at Myse

Fine dining is pricy these days. This isn’t the most affluent household in York but in years gone by, we would happily pick out a Michelin starred restaurant while on holiday for a treat maybe even a couple of times a year. These days in a post-Covid/Brexit/low-inflation world the financial barrier to entry sits higher…

Myse

This is a big one. Over the years it was open in York, Le Cochon Aveugle was pushed onwards by Josh Overington to be deserving of the highest reputation, with each passing year its lack of a Michelin star looking rather more inexplicable. Regardless of the standard and reputation though a natural limit to the…

The Wright Place Wine Tasting

The more things change, the more they stay the same. York has built its reputation on large elements of its attraction having remained unchanged for a great many years, but there’s part of the city that holds a mirror up to that and looks forward. The nature of the hospitality industry, whose operators are always…

Forage York

Sometimes, though admittedly rarely, I really don’t know what to expect when I get invited to a new place to eat. My finger is generally firmly on York’s pulse when it comes to new openings but every so often something will sidestep into view that I’m not entirely sure what to make of. In this…

2021 in review

It feels like quite a long time since these yearly reviews felt like enjoyable reminiscence rather than raking over the embers of another smoking tragedy of a year. Still, we are where we are and 2021 has the sense of being marginally less awful in the memory than its predecessor, which is a trend that…

Reflections on 2020

Well, that didn’t quite go according to plan did it? This time last year I was reminiscing on the preceding 12 months and commenting that “it’s been quite an eventful year”, blissfully ignorant of the incoming tsunami of unwanted eventfulness that would make 2020 a pretty bruising experience for all of us, including a now…