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Yorkshire folk love their food: Yorkshire pudding, Yorkshire curd tart, Yorkshire dressed crab. Of course, they’re blessed with a fine natural larder: game from the moorlands, a coastline of fresh fish, Dales-reared lamb, Wensleydale cheese and rhubarb from the magical West Yorkshire triangle, to mention a few ingredients.
But it’s not all hearty traditional dishes. The county has a sprinkling of Michelin stars (10) that rewards restaurants turning out creative terroir-based dishes; gastropubs as well as country pubs; excellent fish restaurants (with closely guarded batter recipes); artisan joints doing the hipster thing; plus a swathe of ethnically diverse places that bring world flavours to Yorkshire. And when it comes to tea rooms – posh, funky, vintage – Yorkshire nails it.
Find a restaurant by type:
- Best all-rounders
- Best for fine dining
- Best for families
- Best for cheap eats
- Best for walk-ins
Best all-rounders
The General Tarleton
Ferrensby, North Yorkshire | ££ | Reservations advisable | generaltarletonferrensby.co.uk
Yorkshire-born and Michelin-starred chef, Tommy Banks, has branched out into restoring traditional inns to their original purpose of offering nourishing food, a good night’s sleep and a decent pint. The General Tarleton, an 18th-century coaching inn six miles north of Harrogate, is the first he tackled. The food has a Michelin quality in terms of skill and presentation but less of the faff, and certainly less of the price tag (two-course lunches and early-bird menus are £30). And provenance – Banks’s family farms near his flagship restaurant, The Black Swan at Oldstead – is still key. Expect reimagined pub classics such as beef tartare with hash browns, ox cheek with buttery mash, the day’s fresh catch with lemon caper butter and, of course, proper puddings such as sourdough treacle tart, and lemon verbena rice pudding.
The Alice Hawthorn Inn
Nun Monkton, North Yorkshire | ££ | Reservations advisable | thealicehawthorn.com
In an idyllic village setting – opposite a cow-grazed green, among vine-covered cottages – this red-brick country inn shouldn’t really work as a foodie destination. Accessed by a country road that doesn’t go much further and set among quiet water meadows, it’s really on the way to nowhere. But chef John Topham provides a smart menu that gives a clever, but not pretentious, boost to pub classics – perhaps local venison with black pudding, boulangère potatoes and blackberry sauce, or seared cod with cherry tomatoes – plus local cheeses served with that very Yorkshire accompaniment of fruit cake.
The Owl at Hawnby
Hawnby, North York Moors | ££ | Reservations advised | theowlhawnby.co.uk
At the top of the hill, in the tiny village of Hawnby – population 193 – this pub manages to be a locals’ local, a walkers’ refuelling stop, a venue for shooting parties and a smart dining spot. While the bar is fuss-free and welcoming with a toasty fire (and Yorkshire hand-pulled ales), the dining room has a stylish, pared-back elegance with forest-green walls, colourful standard lamps and romantic candlesticks on polished oak tables. Yorkshire-born Chef Sam Varley – who picked up Michelin and Good Food guide notices within six months of opening The Owl – offers up a deceptively simple yet creative take on pub classics with a surprising depth of flavour. Dishes include chalk stream trout rillettes with sourdough crisps, Hawnby venison burger with bone marrow onion and chips, and Berkshire pork chop with stewed rhubarb and spring greens. The desserts are proper puddings, such as steamed lemon sponge and custard.
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Best for fine dining
The Star Inn
Harome, near Helmsley, North York Moors | ££-£££ | Reservations essential | thestaratharome.co.uk
Whitby-born chef-owner Andrew Pern was one of Britain’s first champions of local sourcing, and now has a huge kitchen garden at the back of this chocolate-box-cute thatched pub. His Michelin-starred menus are punchy, robust yet skilfully balanced and as much about texture as taste: perhaps roast scallops with poached rhubarb and ginger, followed by charcoal-roasted venison with liquorice-braised beetroot, haggis and twiglets, and a stonking cheese trolley. There’s an element of fun – black-pudding bread is a kitchen favourite – and you get the same menu in the bar as the restaurant.
Shaun Rankin at Grantley Hall
Near Ripon, Yorkshire Dales | £££ | Reservations essential | grantleyhall.co.uk
You come here as much for the surrounds as for the food. The drive through velvety parkland bordered by a river and sweeping to a halt in front of a period-drama-worthy Palladian-style mansion, is an experience in itself. Yorkshire-born Rankin gained Michelin stars at his Jersey restaurants before setting up Ormer Mayfair, London. Here at Grantley Hall he weaves his magic – and a Michelin star since 2020 – over flavour-driven tasting menus that are both creative and fun without being pretentious: baby vegetables sit in mushroom “soil”; pine-nut crusted turbot comes with roasted crisps of cauliflower; a roasted tomato breaks open to reveal iced goats’ cheese. Portions are decent, service fulsome yet entertaining.
JÖRO
Oughtibridge, Sheffield | ££-£££ | Reservations essential | jororestaurant.co.uk
In a 19th-century former paper mill on Sheffield’s north-western outskirts, JÖRO confounds expectations. It’s neither rustic in its cooking – although joro (pronounced “yoro”) means “earth” in Old Norse – nor fancy in presentation (despite only offering tasting menus). But it certainly offers bags of fun, brilliant flavours and plenty of entertainment. From a large open kitchen, chef Luke French (who co-owns with his wife Stacey Sherwood) and his team serve up intensely flavoured dishes with a Nordic-Asian theme: chalk stream trout with sea buckthorn and yuzu, hogget with pepper tamari and wild garlic, a palate cleanser of blackcurrant, beetroot and chocolate. It’s a warm, inviting space that’s part industrial-chic, part rustic-cool. Diners come dressed how they want, chefs serve and chat, and there’s a cracking soundtrack.
Pipe and Glass
South Dalton, East Yorkshire | ££ | Reservations essential | pipeandglass.co.uk
A village pub that segues effortlessly between locals’ regular and Michelin-starred restaurant, Pipe and Glass sits close to the tall-spired St Mary’s church, all low-slung white-washed walls and red-pantiled roof. Chef-owner James Mackenzie, who co-owns with his wife Kate, was head chef at The Star (see above) so you can expect some of the same punchy but skilful cooking that takes the best of local produce and turns up the flavour intensity: barbecued Dales’ lamb with feta, mint and potato croquette, say, or roast guinea fowl with wild garlic persillade. Puddings are not to be missed: ginger burnt cream with poached garden rhubarb, for example – while cheeses are taken very seriously.
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Best for families
Valentino’s, Ripon
Ripon, North Yorkshire | £-££ | Reservations advisable weekends/holidays | valentinosripon.co.uk
Who wants pizza? Who wants pasta? Who wants bistecca? Who just wants gelato? However fussy your big and little eaters, you’d be unlucky not to find something to tempt at this covers-all-bases Italian restaurant a few minutes from Ripon’s Market Place. Big and bright, and a locals’ favourite (established 1986), the pasta is made “in casa”, pizzas are traditional Roman-style, thin-based, and there are authentic classic dishes such as saltimbocca alla Romana (veal wrapped in Parma ham) and pollo alla Caprese (chicken in a tomato and basil sauce). The home-made tiramisu is generous and should probably come with an alcohol warning.
Lister Arms
Malham,Yorkshire Dales | £-££ | Reservations advisable at weekends/holidays | listerarms.co.uk
This is one of those rare pubs where everyone seems to be catered for: village green and stream to keep the kids happy, a decent range of ales for the beer-lovers, and home-cooked food that caters for the traditionalists and those with a fancy for something more. Choose from a range of steaks, sausage and mash, and their famous pies (such as haddock, salmon and prawn) to monkfish tail gremolata, and home-made sweet potato and chickpea burger. If crumble is on the menu it comes with cream and custard! The dining room is rustically smart, and walkers and dogs (the latter in the bar), very welcome.
Magpie Café
Whitby, North Yorkshire | £-££ | Reservations advisable | magpiecafe.co.uk
There’s nothing small, quiet or dainty about this long-established, family-run fish restaurant that sprawls over three higgledy-piggledy floors in a black-and-white building on Whitby’s quayside. Fish portions are as huge as the menu (around 20 varieties, from monkfish to turbot) while the waitresses are disarmingly motherly. And you really need to save room for their puddings; the crumble (with custard, naturally) is one of the best, and one portion is easily big enough for two. If fully booked, their takeaway fish and chip shop next door cooks to restaurant standards.
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Best for cheap eats
The Old School Tea Room
Hebden, North Yorkshire | £ | Reservations for afternoon tea | theoldschooltearoom.com
Two miles outside popular Grassington, in upper Wharfedale, in the less-busy surrounds of pretty Hebden, this family-run café in a Victorian former schoolroom ticks plenty of boxes: garden with outdoor tables, dog-friendly, child-friendly (playground, too), and menus from breakfast through brunch, lunch and snacks to full afternoon tea served on vintage china. Even the fussiest of eaters are catered for, with quiches, savoury pies, soup, ham and chips, super salads, sandwiches, vegan and gluten-free options on the menu. It’s licensed too, and cakes and scones are baked daily.
The Harbour Bar
Scarborough, North Yorkshire | £ | theharbourbar.co.uk
Hark back to the golden seaside days of the 1950s and 1960s at this ice-cream parlour and café on Scarborough’s South Bay seafront. Founded in 1945, it’s agleam with chrome and mirrors, red banquettes and yellow Formica tables in true “milk bar” style. Still owned by the founding Alonzi family, and with ice-cream made in the back, here you can indulge your nostalgic tastes for knickerbocker glory, banana split and soda floats, as well as traditional sandwiches, crumpets and toasted teacakes. Mirrors around the walls reassure patrons that “ice-cream is good for you” and one should “keep fit by eating ice-cream every day”.
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Best for walk-ins
Bettys
Harrogate, North Yorkshire | £-££ | Bookings for afternoon tea only | bettys.co.uk
The flagship café tea room of the iconic Yorkshire brand – founded in 1919 – sits on a corner site in one of the town’s most prominent positions, opposite Montpellier Gardens. All cast-iron canopy and grand windows, it is a cut above the average and it’s rare not to have a queue outside (bookings are not possible, except for afternoon tea). Whether you’re here for an eggs Benedict breakfast, coffee and scones (try one of its Fat Rascals, a heftier type of scone), something savoury such as smoked haddock and leek rösti fishcake or Yorkshire rarebit, or the full-on afternoon tea, the service is the same: professional, capable and motherly. Teas are all loose-leaf, while the famed cakes – such as an Engadine torte or strawberry eclair – arrive on gilt-handled trolleys. And you can buy more to take away from the shop.
Angela’s Tearooms
Filey, North Yorkshire | £ | angelas-tea-rooms.edan.io
No matter if you’ve never been before, you will be welcomed here like a long-last friend with big smiles, and lots of “what can I get you, lovely?”. And then your eyes will bulge at the tottering piles of cakes, scones and sausage rolls, all of which are homemade and generously portioned. Run by Angela Cox and her daughter, Natalie (Angela is less hands-on these days, though still makes the preserves and pickles), the pretty tea room with its polka-dot tablecloths and Tiffany lampshades, sits in Crescent Gardens with perfect views over Filey Bay from the courtyard tables. Home-made quiche, with salad and home-made coleslaw, and crab sandwiches are favourites among the savouries while Battenberg cake and curd tarts are winners among the many cakes.
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How we choose
Every restaurant in this curated list has been tried and tested by our destination expert, who has visited to provide you with their insider perspective. We cover a range of budgets, from neighbourhood favourites to Michelin-starred restaurants – to best suit every type of traveller’s taste – and consider the food, service, best tables, atmosphere and price in our recommendations. We update this list regularly to keep up with the latest opening and provide up to date recommendations.
