Best things to eat and drink in North Yorkshire, ranked
A tray of Yorkshire puddings and roast beef on a pub table
Twelve local specialities ranked by whether they are worth the detour, from a £14 Sunday roast in a Dales pub to £9 haddock eaten standing up on a Whitby quay.
1. Fish and chips on the coast, done properly
This is the county's defining plate and Whitby is its capital, because the fish comes in locally, the frying tradition is over a century deep, and the standard on the harbour is genuinely high. Order haddock rather than cod, ask for it fried to order if the queue allows, and expect £11-16 sitting down in a restaurant or £8-11 from a takeaway counter. The Magpie Cafe on Pier Road is the famous one and the queue in August can run 45 minutes; the good news is that three or four other fryers within 300 metres are almost as good with no wait.
Scarborough, Filey, Staithes and Robin Hood's Bay all fry well, and inland the standard drops noticeably once you are past Pickering. Two rules. First, eat lunch not dinner, because the fish is freshest and the queues shorter. Second, mushy peas, scraps and a pot of tea are not affectations here, they are the format. Skip the seafront places advertising a full menu of pizza, curry and chips: a fryer that does everything does nothing well.
2. Sunday roast with a proper Yorkshire pudding
The Yorkshire pudding was documented in print in the 1740s and in this county it is served as a component of the roast rather than a novelty, though a few pubs still do the old first-course pudding with onion gravy. The best versions are in village pubs in the Dales, Ryedale and the Howardian Hills, where the beef is local and the kitchen does two sittings and then stops. Expect £16-22 for beef, £14-18 for pork or chicken, and Sunday booking to be essential from about Wednesday.
Where it goes wrong is in tourist-facing town-centre pubs serving roasts from noon to eight on a carvery basis, which produces grey beef and a pudding that has been sitting under a lamp. My ranked approach: a Wensleydale or Swaledale village pub first, a Howardian Hills dining pub near Malton second, a Harrogate or York gastropub third, and anywhere with laminated photos of the food not at all. If the pub has a chalkboard listing the farm the beef came from, you are in the right room.
3. Wensleydale cheese, at source in Hawes
Wensleydale cheese has been made in the dale since Cistercian monks brought the method, and the creamery at Hawes is the working home of it, with a visitor centre, a viewing gallery over the vats and a shop selling far more variants than any supermarket carries. Buy the young, crumbly, slightly sweet plain Wensleydale rather than the cranberry-studded blocks aimed at gift shops, and eat it the local way, with a wedge of fruit cake. A visit takes an hour and Hawes itself, with its ropemaker and the Dales Countryside Museum, fills a morning.
Beyond Wensleydale, the county's cheese scene is quietly strong: blue cheeses from the Dales, sheep and goat cheeses from small producers around Ryedale and Nidderdale, and good cheese counters in Malton, Northallerton and Skipton. A cheese and pork pie picnic bought in a market town costs £12-18 for two and beats most pub lunches. Skip the airport-style cheese gift boxes; buy from a counter where they will cut you a corner to taste.
4. Masham beer, and the brewery towns
Masham, a small market town on the Ure, supports two well-known breweries within a few hundred metres of each other, Theakston and Black Sheep, the second founded by a member of the same family after the first changed hands. Both run visitor centres and tours with tastings; times vary by season, so book ahead. Tour plus tasting typically costs £15-25, and the town square and its pubs make an easy afternoon. This is the best single beer destination in the county.
Elsewhere, Tadcaster is the historic brewing town, with its limestone water and two large operations still active, though it is a working place rather than a tourist one. Across the Dales and Moors, small independents supply village pubs, and a well-kept pint of Yorkshire bitter costs £4.20-5.50 depending on how close you are to York. Skip the trendy taproom in a city centre if you want the local thing: the county's beer culture lives in stone pubs with hand pumps and a fire.
5. Whitby kippers and 6. the market-town pork pie
Whitby's smokehouse tradition on Henrietta Street, above the harbour, produces oak-smoked kippers using a method essentially unchanged since the 1870s, and the smell as you pass is one of the honest pleasures of the town. Buy a pair to take home for around £6-9, or find them on a breakfast menu in a West Cliff guesthouse. They are salty, oily and not for everyone; if you like smoked fish at all, they are the best thing you will carry out of Whitby that is not jet jewellery.
The pork pie is the market-town staple, and the good ones come from butchers in Malton, Northallerton, Thirsk, Bedale, Leyburn and Helmsley rather than from supermarkets. Expect £3-5 for an individual pie with a firm hot-water crust and proper jelly. Malton has the strongest claim as the county's food town, with a monthly food market, Talbot Yard's cluster of small producers, and a cookery and food festival programme; check the current dates before planning a trip around it.
7-9. Tea rooms, curd tart and parkin
Bettys, founded in Harrogate in 1919, has branches in Harrogate, York, Northallerton and Ilkley and is the county's most famous tea room; the queue outside the Harrogate and York branches is a permanent feature of both towns. Afternoon tea runs around £25-45 a head depending on branch and format, and a pot of tea and a fat rascal is the cheaper way in at under £12. It is genuinely good and genuinely touristy. Go on a weekday morning or not at all.
The two baked things to look for are Yorkshire curd tart, made with curds, currants and nutmeg, and parkin, a dense oatmeal and treacle gingerbread traditionally eaten around bonfire night in early November and best after a few days in the tin. Both turn up in independent bakeries in market towns for £2.50-4 a slice. Ranked honestly: curd tart above parkin, both above scones, and all three above the mass-produced Yorkshire fudge sold on every seaside front.
10-12. Game, forced rhubarb, and where to eat well for £20
Grouse from the Moors and Dales appears on menus from mid-August, with partridge and pheasant from autumn into winter, and a good game dish in a Ryedale or Wensleydale dining pub costs £22-30. Forced rhubarb, grown in dark sheds and harvested by candlelight, is a Yorkshire winter speciality found on menus from January to March. Both are worth ordering when they are in season and worth ignoring when they are not, which is the whole point of eating in a farming county.
For £20 a head you can eat very well here: a pie and a pint in a Dales pub for £18-22, a takeaway haddock supper eaten on the harbour wall for £10, a market-town butcher and bakery picnic for £8-10 each, or a set lunch in a York or Harrogate dining room for £20-26. What to skip: the identikit chain restaurants on York's riverside and Scarborough's foreshore, the £45 tasting menu in a hotel that has no obvious link to a local supplier, and any pub advertising authentic Yorkshire fare in three languages.
Before you book
What people ask before booking York.
Whitby, on the harbour, at lunchtime. The Magpie Cafe is the famous name and can carry a 45-minute queue in August; several other fryers within a short walk are nearly as good with no wait. Order haddock, and expect £8-11 takeaway or £11-16 seated.
Yes, and from midweek in summer. Good village kitchens run two sittings and stop when the beef runs out, usually by mid-afternoon. Expect £16-22 for roast beef. Turning up at 2pm hoping for a table is the single most common visitor mistake in the Dales.
For beer drinkers, yes. Two well-known breweries with visitor centres sit within a few hundred metres in a small market town, so you can tour, taste and walk to a pub. Tours typically cost £15-25 and need booking; confirm current times directly with each brewery.
