The Moorcock Inn, Yorkshire

One of the best things about building an entire weekend away around a meal in a nice restaurant is that to a large extent it insulates you from many of the issues that would spoil other kinds of weekends. The main thing being, of course, as this is the UK, the weather. It absolutely battered down in Sowerby Bridge for almost the whole time we were there, but we happily traipsed through a sodden Piece Market in Halifax, and sheltered from the driving rain in Riddlesden Hall because we knew however wet our feet got, at the end of the day we could change into nice dry socks and sit down to a Modern British tasting menu.

Of course, if said Modern British tasting menu turned out to be a load of rubbish, that really would have meant a wasted weekend but fortunately I'd done my research and the Moorcock Inn, perched on the bleak moors above the Calder Valley and looking for all the world like the "local shop for local people" from League of Gentlemen, was as close to a sure thing as made no odds. With a short, seasonal, insanely reasonably-priced menu (£39 for nine courses!), and a very trendy-looking drinks pairing including beer and umeshu, it was clear, from the moment we were cheerily ushered in from the squall outside, we were in for a good time.

"Snacks", an unusual arrangement of vegetable cuttings and charcuterie, looked at first like it was going to be rustic to the point of careless, except every single item on this plate sung. The sausage had a lovely deep flavour, not too lean or too fatty, the peas had been treated to some kind of gentle pickling but retained a great fresh crunch, and the green shoots (some kind of weed that grows in the fields around the Moorcock that I'm afraid I've completely forgotten the name of) were buttery and salty. But best of all were the sweetcorn which had been glazed with a special kind of seaweed that made them taste of "truffled lobster" - their words, and they weren't wrong.

Next up was chilled courgette soup, a clean, colourful dish gazpacho-style thing dotted with various bits and pieces from the garden including nasturtium flowers and micro herbs. Cold, vegetable-led soups live or die on the quality of their raw ingredients, and in fact sail pretty close to disaster much of the time even with good ingredients, but this was lovely - summery, comforting, and perfectly seasoned.

It's a brave soul indeed that serves whole sardine in a fine dining restaurant - I don't mind personally spending 10 minutes picking out pin bones, but I can understand why others wouldn't. But some poor soul at the Moorcock had gone through these little beasties with tweezers and a magnifying glass, and even after that somehow meticulously cross-hatched the skin (presumably to make it easier to eat as well as to soak up more of the marinade), and what you end up with is all of the meaty, salty, oily flavour of these most underrated of fish, and no scratched tonsils. It's brilliant.

"Onion and rhubarb tarte tatin" would be a minor stroke of genius presented undressed - soft, sweet onions made a perfect filling for a savoury tart, and this was a genuinely innovative idea. Indeed, on the pescatarian menu it came just like this. But lucky meat eaters found theirs draped in a silky-smooth sauce made of chicken livers, which lifted the whole thing onto another level entirely. You'll have probably noticed that the ingredients at the Moorcock, tasteful, high quality and seasonal though they are, are not super premium - there's no grassy Mediterranean olive oils used, no fish roe or expensive crustacea. Instead, by making the most of cheaper meats, by literally picking "salad" from the field next door, and presenting it all with intelligence and cheffy flair, the Moorcock are able to offer what is surely one of the country's most exciting tasting menus for less than a glass of wine costs in some places.

Mutton, for example, is not an expensive cut of meat, more often found in pies than modern British tasting menus. But this beautiful cut - rump I think - scattered with sea salt and dressed in lavabread and lemonbalm, made me wonder why you don't see it far more often. It was so tender, so full of grassy, gamey flavour (13-year old animals apparently, that had quite clearly lived a good life) that I can't imagine even the finest lamb - or any other protein for that matter - beating it in comparison.

The pescatarian main was plaice, perfectly cooked to retain a dense, meaty texture, glazed with brown butter and topped with samphire and various other coastal succulents they presumably came across when foraging for lavabread. It was, as well, beautiful.

Pineapple weed ice cream (aha - perhaps that was the green plant from the snacks) had an interesting sweet/vegetal flavour - not pineapple but not savoury either, somewhere in between. Topped with a little compote of gooseberries and verbena, it was, like much of what had come before, appealingly rustic in presentation and intelligently balanced in taste, and quite unlike anything you're likely to be served anywhere else.

Finally, parkin - something you admittedly are quite likely to be served somewhere else, especially round this part of the world - but very nicely baked, and spread with an obscene (this is a good thing) amount of house cultured butter and fermented honey. Inexpensive ingredients, chosen well, presented honestly and with style - perhaps the formula isn't groundbreaking, and yet why does the way the Moorcock Inn go about things feel so fresh and new?

Perhaps the service - friendly, capable, knowledgable - helps, and the cozy rooms of this ancient building in which the rustic, hyper-local produce feels right at home. Perhaps it's all the little touches, from the crusty house sourdough to the open-hearted idea of giving you more cutlery than you'll ever need in a pouch at the start of the meal, to save faffing. Perhaps it's the atmosphere in the no-reservations bar next door where much of the tasting menu is listed on a blackboard and can be ordered for similarly pootling amounts of money (crispy smoked potatoes, £3.50), and where happy tables of families and their dogs sit and sip on superb Cloudwater beers and natural wines. Perhaps it's just that every single element of what makes a great food pub has been considered and lovingly implemented, a holistic, wholesome adventure in hospitality and seasonal dining that's impossible not to fall in love with. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Moorcock Inn is a perfect restaurant. Yeah, I'm going to go with that.

10/10

Jöro, Sheffield

Before it comes to the stage of trying the food at Jöro, you'd be forgiven for assuming that a certain Place In Copenhagen features as a significant influence on the way they go about things here in Sheffield. There's the name, of course - Old Norse for 'earth' and pronounced 'yoro' which as a nice ring to it and looks suitably Nordic written down with its umlaut. And then there's the building itself - is there anything more thrustingly modern than a converted shipping container? It's beautifully done, too, without a bad table in the house, each well-spaced and sensitively lit, bringing to mind the industrial aesthetic of another Copenhagen institution Amass. So far, so familiar.

And yet to dismiss Jöro as a Yorkshire Noma is to do it a great disservice. And not only because I thought Noma was far too pleased with its mastery of odd techniques to remember to actually give people a good time (I had a far more enjoyable lunch at Jöro), but because really, superficialities aside, Jöro is very much its own animal, taking just as many cues from Asian, and even traditional Yorkshire, cuisine than anything Scandi.

There's also the question of cost. Our evening began with an apology from front of house - one of the courses out of the tasting menu wasn't available, so instead of the usual 8 for £45, they could offer us 7 for £40. By anyone's standards, a 7-course tasting menu for £40, with a matching wine/cocktail option for an extra £35, is still an utter bargain, and would have been worth the trip up to Sheffield even if the kitchen had been less than competent and the advertised 7 courses been the sum total of the food offered.

Of course, this being Yorkshire where the compulsion to overfeed runs deep in genetic makeup of its people (I should know, my grandmother's family owned a fish and chip shop in Wombwell), Jöro aren't about to let you get away with just eating seven courses. Fully three sets of nibbles preceded the "first" course, a lovely linseed cracker dotted with blobs of cream cheese and beetroot...

...a mouthful of warm black pudding topped with apple sauce, rich and comforting...

...and a completely stunning duck croquette, managing to pack more flavour into this tiny cube of breaded, fried meat than almost any similar nibble I've had the good fortune to try for as long as I can remember. With a deep, almost sour game flavour and perhaps a touch of something alcoholic, it was a seriously impressive bit of work.

First course proper was a pretty 'tomato tartare' showcasing powerful San Marzano tomatoes and fresh summer herbs to great effect. Matched with this was Jöro's take on a Bloody Mary, a tomato consommé and vodka mixture that had an even more overwhelmingly "tomatoey" hit than the food. I don't care how jaded or cynical you try to be, there is no way a glass of clear liquid tasting like the world's finest Bloody Mary isn't going to make you gasp. It certainly did me.

Given that everything else from the kitchens at Jöro was so accomplished, it was very odd - not to mention a bit of a surprise - that the bread was so disappointing. Pappy and dry, it wasn't stale as such - at least I don't think that was the issue - it was just nowhere near as good as it should have been. There must be better bakeries out there - I've heard good things about Forge on Abbeydale Rd - so let's hope the house bread offering gets a makeover some time soon.

Anyway we were soon back on track with the scallops. With neat discs of seafood dressed speckled with vibrant parsley oil, and sprinkled with horseradish and samphire, it was as pretty as it was deceptively complex, all the various summer herbs and dressings combining in such a way as to not have any one stand out but allowing the scallop - cured in elderflower vinegar, which just removed the 'flabbiness' of raw scallop without destroying the freshness - to still be the main flavour.

Similarly barbecued pork neck glazed in some kind of sweet/sour, umami-rich Japanese dressing, its intense flavours cooled by pressed cucumber and texture added with toasted cashews. Japanese flavours featured in several of the courses at Jöro, and although jumping around global cuisines runs the risk of being confusing or disjointed, the sensitive and only occasional use of things like yuzu or dashi at Jöro makes perfect sense. It's also worth pointing out that the wine that this course came matched with, a Riesling I think, very cleverly matched the sugar levels in the pork with just the right amount of sweetness, producing a clean, crisp effect that was quite something.

In this broccoli dish, the vegetable blackened and smokey from the grill, paired with a blob of irresistibly addictive black garlic paste and topped with a generous dusting of very good Vacche Rosse Parmesan. By this point, you'll probably guess, we were having a blast. Inventive, exciting cooking like this, presented with flair and skill by an extremely competent front of house team, doesn't along very often, but the knowledge we were going to be sent home stuffed, drunk and happy for around £70 a head made the whole atmosphere even more giddy. As I scooped up the last of the black garlic I began making plans to rent a flat in Kelham Island and spend long, lazy days in the Fat Cat pub drinking pints of £3.40 local ales.

Next a huge, plump duck breast glazed with local heather honey, with a brilliantly sharp and complex wild blackcurrant sauce, beetroot and al-dente hispi cabbage. If I'm going to be brutal, perhaps not the most flavoursome bird I've ever been asked to eat, but cooked absolutely beautifully and so made up for a little depth of flavour with an utterly charming texture. After the dish was finished, the sauces and oils left on the plate - deep vermilion reds of fruits and meat juices, and emerald green cabbage oils, made the plate resemble a work of modern art.

Pre-dessert (yes, that's the fourth additional 'course' so far for our £40) was a smooth sour cream ice cream topped with summer berries, like a kind of fancy Müller fruit corner. Lovely tableware it came in too, a kind of rough stone bowl softened with frost.

First dessert proper was a brown butter and muscovado parfait on top of what they coyly referred to as 'parkin', a Yorkshire cake that's a kind of soft flapjack. The parfait itself, and the neat spheres of sake-soaked apple on top, were hugely enjoyable and worth the price of admission, but unfortunately the 'parkin' beneath, perhaps because they'd decided to tone down the strong ginger element usually present in parkin, was a bit bland, and the soft texture didn't really sit well. Still, full marks for invention and local colour.

"Yorkshire strawberries and raspberries" turned out to be an incredibly light yoghurt mousse of some kind, studded with dried and frozen fruit and spiked with yuzu. Light, refreshing and summery, it dissolved in the mouth like dairy candy floss, and was another great example of Jöro's mastery of technique. Also, being so insubstantial it was, despite our almost completely sated appetites, incredibly easy to eat, a very welcome thing indeed at this point in the meal.

Incredibly, Jöro decided to gift us with yet one more final flourish - petits fours of summer fruit marshmallows, and very lovely things they were too.

But that, eventually, sadly, was it. The bill, as I keep banging on about, came to £143 total, which included more than enough booze - but the Yorkshire generosity didn't even end at the glasses of Picpoul which our sommellier filled up to about the level of a half pint with a cheeky grin. No, Jöro had one final flourish of northern hospitality up its sleeve - no service charge. So we worked out the usual London % and left it in cash, because they'd earned every last bloody penny.

I don't want to focus too much on the bill though, because I don't want to give the impression that my enjoyment of lunch at Jöro was largely due to the fact I knew I was getting a bargain in contrast to what similar meals would have cost down in Shoreditch or Marylebone. Yes, Jöro is insanely good value - a good 30% less than what they could still charge with a straight face and far less you'd spend at far lesser restaurants, even in Sheffield. But the most important thing about Jöro, in fact the only important thing all said and done, is that they serve some of the finest food in the country, in one of the finest cities in the country, and there's absolutely no way you could eat here and not have the time of your life. So let's just leave it at that.

9/10

The Star Inn at Harome, Yorkshire

Though I'm sure this part of the world has its charms at any time of the year and whatever the weather, I've been fortunate enough to experience perfect summer sun each time I've had cause to travel to Yorkshire. For the Black Swan our meal was preceded by a stroll through the surrounding valleys, spotting a few of the animals that were to appear on our plates that evening. And in Leeds a couple of years later, though most of the day was spent on a train or in that strange dining room on the top floor of a clothes shop, we did have time for a pint outside Whitelock's before the journey home, soaking up the rays as we debated the merits or otherwise of our lunch.

And so too last weekend, where a long-awaited tasting menu at Yorkshire super-gastropub The Star Inn at Harome happened to coincide with the hottest April day for 70 years, a fact not lost on the hungry group of people (myself included) climbing the huge hill to Wombleton on our way to lunch. But there's nothing like a long walk up a hill in 27C to work up an appetite, and once walking boots had been swapped for high heels (not mine) and a bottle of fizzy rosé opened in the Star's back garden, we were ready to get stuck in.

First of the courses was a baked oyster covered in shaved (though strangely not melted - I think the cheese was grated over the already-baked oyster) Parmesan and a kind of wild garlic pesto. I've never not preferred a raw oyster to a cooked one, but this was still very nice, using good lean oysters and just the right amount of cheese and garlic to season them.

Next, one of my favourite things in the whole world - beef consommé - here poured into a bowl containing fresh horseradish, pickled beetroot and charred miniature onions. The vegetables were well chosen and well cooked, but of course we were mainly here for one thing, and that was a big Bovril-y hit of glossy beef soup, which was everything I needed it to be.

Another cracking dish was this of octopus, tender and touched with a slight char from the coals, in a rich, pitch-black Venere risotto, dotted with cavolo nero from the garden, dill, nasturtium, lovage, chorizo and who knows what else. In fact if I was going to pick fault I'd say we could have done with losing a few ingredients (particulary the raw lovage which tends to beat everything it's put up against to oblivion) as there was more than enough to enjoy in the octopus and risotto alone, but I suppose there's no point having a kitchen garden if you don't use it.

Then two foie gras dishes arrived simultaneously, our lovely waiter (more on whom later) happy to swap out a couple of the "signature Star Inn" foie, black pudding and apple for something from the shorter Garden menu which sounded more intriguing. And yes, although the signature "posh full English" (if you like) was immensely enjoyable, not least because the foie dissolved in the mouth like meaty butter and the sugar-coated apple was a perfect foil for it, the simpler yet slightly more experimental pairing of foie with warm spiced pineapple and cool cep ice cream was even more successful, garnering universal praise from our table.

Mains weren't disappointing exactly, just not quite up to the standard of what had come before. Turbot was lacking a bit in flavour (I'm told the older, larger animals taste better so this could have been a young-un), and an "oyster velouté" was subdued to the point of invisibility, although a cute little "wild garlic butter pie" it came with was warm and comforting.

And a slightly mealy venison loin played second fiddle to a braised faggot, plump with tasty offal, which really should have been the star of the show, especially once drenched in a sauce of fermented black garlic. Now I come to think of it, I don't think I've ever had a really good venison dish - it always seems to be a bit of a characterless protein, despite 'game' being my favourite category of food overall - so maybe this was just a personal thing and someone else would have found far more to rave about.

Despite the odd mis-step, though, we were enjoying ourselves, and in an effort to make the lunch stretch as far as possible into the afternoon (and also because we like cheese), availed ourselves of the cheeseboard. Don't ask me to remember everything that arrived (the matching wine measures were extremely generous) but Yorkshire Blue and Stinking Bishop were as good as they usually are, and all served at a perfect temperature.

I'm willing to believe there are people in the world who would not enjoy a Pontefract Cake Soufflé with salted caramel sauce and banana ice cream, but I am certainly not one of those people, and I thought the combination of the sweet banana and faintly bitter liquorice in the soufflé was seriously impressive, an experiment that very much worked. I am told, though I didn't try it myself, that the other dessert, "Whipped Brillat-Saverin with Flavours of Yorkshire Curd Tart" was equally experimental but less successful, although full marks for imagination. (I accidentally took a photo when my camera was on the table, but I quite like the effect so I've left it in)

Moving from our cosy little private dining room (the Star is full of cosy little nooks, as building that have been around for about 700 years generally do) back out to the glorious sun of the garden, the afternoon soon dissolved, as it generally tends to do with this particular bunch of people, into spirit-soaked, alcoholic oblivion. I notice from the itemised bill that one of us was the lucky recipient of a £26 shot of 15yo Glenfarclas while two others had to make do with a £6 Kilchoman Sanaig apiece, and did somewhat less well out of the equally-shared bill. And I have no idea who ordered the Mini Cheddars. Still, the point is, a marvellous time was had by all, thanks in no small part as well to our fantastic Spanish (I think) waiter who was a model of his profession and coped with every one of our increasingly lively requests with charm, knowledge and more than a little patience.

In the grand scheme of things, perhaps The Star Inn isn't quite up there with the very best country restaurants I've been lucky enough to visit over the last few years. You've probably come to the same conclusion yourself by this point. But at £120/head for a full afternoon of fun, seven courses and enough quality booze to knock an elephant out, it's certainly good value and I'd be very surprised indeed if you booked a meal here and didn't have just as much fun as we did, booze or no booze, sun or no sun.

8/10

We stayed at Plumpton Court which was great value, very comfortable and did have a well-stocked bar before we arrived. I'm sure they'll have restocked by the time you get there, though.