Food & Drink
Bowled Over
Ali Schofield finds there's a lot more to Ye Olde Punch Bowl than celebrities and TV series
For those viewers only acquainted with the Neil Morrissey Richard Fox pairing after seeing them share a bath full of beer on telly, the promise of a worthy local pub from the men may seem unlikely. That's what some of the locals thought too. The friends' acquisition of Ye Olde Punch Bowl Inn at Marton cum Grafton, televised on Channel 4 in October last year with a celeb-studded opening last March, met with mixed public feeling. It was always going to happen. Celebrity actor and his high flying chef friend - Fox has enjoyed success with his own Sky TV series 'Fox's Fundamentals' and [i]The Beer and Food Cookbook[/i] - stroll in and buy a once-cherished village pub that they won't even bother with, thought some.
With such a motley reception, it was clear that the pair would have to work even harder than other new publicans to make their gastronomic reputations stick. Happily, it appears they've pulled it off.
A crisp Tuesday afternoon saw my two friends and I making the 15 minute drive to the picturesque village for lunch. Welcomed immediately by the friendly manager Tom - Morrissey last year told [i]Plush[/i] he had imposed a rule that no customer be left waiting at the bar more than a minute - we ticked off the first tenet for good pub/restaurants and were seated at an airy window table. Indeed, the olde worlde building and its fresh décor straddles the definitions of pub and restaurant equally. There's a pub quiz every Sunday evening, acclaimed local guitarist Ade Payne hosts a live music night every Tuesday from 9pm playing American country blues and, when we dined there, the bar was packed with diners and locals alike, with a few lone men enjoying a pint at the bar. The restaurant though is packed every night and a lavish Valentines Day dinner looks set to further establish the eatery. It's hard to define - that ambiguous and oft-bandied term 'gastropub' probably doesn't quite do it. So rather than procrastinate further, let's get on to the food.
To start I went for the fried herbed goats cheese with spiced pears and pecans (£6.50), and my friend had the pan-fried pigeon breast with honey soused vegetables, new on the weekly-changed menu that day. My goat's cheese was crisp on the outside and deftly sidestepped the greasiness similar dishes can fall prey to, while the pigeon was melt-in-the-mouth tender. Having held out for the Punch Bowl's popular Aberdeen Angus beef burger (£9), my other friend was keen to get on to mains, so I chose the mushroom and butternut squash crumble (£8.75) and the other went for the fillet of Whitby haddock in beer batter with pea puree (£9.25). My crumble provided a hearty alternative to the slightly smaller portion sizes vegetarian meals often suffer from and came with gorgeous handcut chips, delicious dipped in the handmade tomato sauce. The fish and chips were 'how fish and chips should be', the fruity depth of the Morrissey Fox Blonde used in the batter (the pub boasts an onsite microbrewery) marking the dish out as a particularly popular one. The burger meanwhile was thick and juicy, served in a bread roll handmade on site that morning.
This tastiness of the food could be down to the fact that there isn't anything on the menu that you can't apply the term 'handmade' to. Even the pork scratchings and other bar snacks are handmade, betraying another one of Morrissey's stipulations, that nothing should be processed or artificial. You can't even get a bag of crisps behind the bar, not that you'd want to, and there are no steak knives kept on the premises since the meat should be fresh enough to slice without one.
The desserts were similarly fresh, as we shared the chef's newly invented Yorkshire Mess (Eton is a bit too far away for a team dedicated to local produce) and a divine chocolate and hazelnut brownie with rich chocolate sauce and malt ice cream and cinder toffee, both £6.50. Proving seriously good food need not be serious, the desserts are joined by jelly and ice cream this month (£5) £2 of which will go to Comic Relief, with further Red Nose Day fundraising - including a blowout barbeque hosted by Morrissey and Fox - spread across the next couple of months.
Baths of beer aside, it looks like the Morrissey Fox pairing is one Yorkshire can be proud of.
