Guides ·Food & drink

Yorkshire pudding and the Sunday roast

This is the county's gift to British food, and it is taken seriously. A proper Sunday roast here means beef, thin gravy, roast potatoes and a Yorkshire pudding that has risen tall with a crisp shell and a soft base. Historically the pudding came first, served with gravy before the meat to blunt appetite — a few traditional pubs still offer it that way and it is worth asking. Expect £16 to £22 for a single-course roast in a good Dales or Ryedale pub, served from noon until it sells out, usually by 3pm.

Where to look: village pubs in Wensleydale, Ryedale and the Howardian Hills consistently outperform city restaurants on this dish, because they are cooking for locals who would complain. In York, book by Thursday for Sunday; walk-ins after 1.30pm are optimistic. The giant filled Yorkshire pudding — a bowl-sized pudding stuffed with beef or sausages and gravy for £12 to £16 — is a market-town cafe and pub staple rather than a tourist invention, and Thirsk, Northallerton and Bedale all do it well.

Fish and chips on the Yorkshire coast

Whitby is one of the two or three places in Britain where fish and chips is a destination dish rather than a Friday habit. The standard is haddock or cod in a thin, dry, crackling batter, chips cooked in beef dripping in traditional shops, with mushy peas, bread and butter and a pot of tea. Sit-in on Whitby's Pier Road or in Scarborough's Sandside costs £11 to £16 for haddock and chips; takeaway from a back-street shop away from the harbour is £8 to £12 and often better.

Ask two questions before you order: is it dripping or vegetable oil, and is the fish frozen at sea or landed fresh. Both answers are legitimate; frozen-at-sea is often more consistent. Queues in Whitby in August run 30 to 60 minutes at the famous places — walk five minutes up Flowergate or over to the East Side and the wait halves. Filey and Saltburn both have excellent shops with no queue at all. Scraps, the loose batter bits, are usually free if you ask.

Wensleydale, Swaledale and the cheese counter

Wensleydale cheese is made in Hawes, in the dale it is named after, and the creamery there offers tastings and a viewing gallery for a small entry fee, typically £5 to £8. The traditional style is crumbly, milky and faintly honeyed, best young; the blocks sold nationally with cranberry in them are a modern commercial line rather than the real thing. A wedge of proper Yorkshire Wensleydale costs £4 to £7 at a farm shop, and it belongs with fruit cake — the local pairing that surprises visitors and converts most of them.

Beyond it, seek out Swaledale ewe's cheese from Richmond, Yorkshire blue styles from Ryedale dairies, and smoked and washed-rind cheeses from small makers around Thirsk and Malton. The best counters are at farm shops on the A19 and A64 corridors, Malton's Talbot Yard, and market stalls in Skipton, Richmond and Northallerton. A three-cheese picnic with bread, chutney and a pork pie comes in under £15 for two and is the cheapest good lunch in the Dales.

Pies, parkin and the bakery counter

A proper Yorkshire pork pie is hand-raised, with a hot-water crust, coarse-chopped seasoned pork and a thin jelly layer — eaten cold, ideally standing outside the butcher's. Prices run £2.50 to £4.50 for an individual pie, and the best come from independent butchers in Malton, Pickering, Helmsley, Thirsk and Richmond. Steak and ale pies in pubs at £15 to £19 are the sit-down cousin; look for a pie with proper pastry all round rather than a puff-pastry lid over a stew.

Baking is the county's other quiet strength. Parkin is a dark, sticky oat and treacle gingerbread eaten around bonfire night and sold year-round at £1.50 to £3 a slice — it improves after a few days in a tin. Fat rascals, a scone-meets-rock-cake studded with fruit and topped with almonds and cherries, are a Yorkshire tearoom fixture, most famously at Betty's for around £4. Add Yorkshire curd tart with nutmeg and currants, and Ripon's spiced bread traditions, and you have a decent afternoon.

Breakfast, tea and the afternoon ritual

The full English here leans Yorkshire: back bacon, a good sausage, black pudding, fried or grilled tomato, mushrooms, egg, baked beans and either fried bread or toast. Bed-and-breakfast versions in Dales and coastal guesthouses are usually included in your £70 to £95 room rate and are the reason you can walk until 3pm without lunch. In cafes, a full breakfast is £8 to £13; a bacon sandwich in a market cafe in Skipton, Thirsk or Northallerton is £4 to £6 and comes with a mug of strong tea.

Afternoon tea is a Harrogate institution, thanks largely to Betty's on Parliament Street, opened in 1919 and still without a booking system at the main tearoom — expect to queue 20 to 45 minutes at weekends. Tiers run roughly £25 to £45 per person. Country hotels across the Dales and Ryedale do their own versions at £22 to £35. The unglamorous alternative: a pot of tea and a fat rascal or curd tart in a village tearoom for £6 to £9, which is most of the pleasure for a fifth of the price.

Ale, gin and what to drink with it

Yorkshire is a cask ale heartland. Theakston and Black Sheep are both brewed in Masham, and both run brewery tours with tastings for roughly £12 to £20 — Theakston's cooper is one of the last working in Britain. Timothy Taylor's Landlord, brewed just over the border, is on many pumps here and is the benchmark pale bitter. Order a pint for £4.20 to £5.60, or a half if you are pacing a Dales pub crawl. Dark milds and porters return in winter.

Beyond beer, the county has a strong small-distillery scene: gins from Masham, Whitby, Harrogate and Malton, plus Yorkshire rum and vodka producers. Harrogate's other liquid claim is spa water, which you can smell at the Royal Pump Room Museum and, historically, taste. Wine drinkers should note the county's small vineyards in the Vale of York. In pubs, ask what is local and cask-conditioned; the answer is usually good and usually cheaper than the keg options behind it.

Modern Yorkshire cooking

The last 15 years have given North Yorkshire a serious restaurant scene built on the same larder: Whitby crab and lobster, Ryedale pork, Dales lamb and beef, forced rhubarb from the triangle to the south, wild garlic and hedgerow fruit. York carries the county's fine-dining weight with tasting menus at £75 to £120, and Malton's Talbot Yard has turned a former coaching yard into a cluster of small producers — coffee roaster, gelato maker, baker, brewer — where £10 buys an excellent grazing lunch.

The mid-tier is where the value sits. Country inns in Helmsley, Middleham, Ripon and around Skipton serve two courses of genuinely accomplished cooking for £30 to £40 a head with a drink, often with rooms upstairs at £100 to £150 so you can drink the wine. Book Friday and Saturday well ahead; midweek in winter you can often walk in, and many kitchens run set lunches at £18 to £24 that are the single best-value meals in the county.

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Harrogate West Park Hotel

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