Sunday 6 March 2016

Ladies who lunch ...

Time flies ... and I cant believe it is over 2 years now since Katrina Gray from Wold Cottage, Christine Ryder from Scaife Hall Farm and I met up. We all do bed and breakfast and I guess at a rough guess we if we joined our years of serving breakfasts up would be well on the way to our centenary . This is my 38th year. We bounce ideas off each other and catch up on all our family news as well. We previously had enjoyed many lunches at Middlethorpe Hall, but as chef Nick Evans had moved to the Refectory in the newly refurbed York Royal Station Hotel,we decided to meet up there.
York itself was relatively quiet and the park and ride served us all well coming in from different directions. Only £2.80pp return makes more sense than the parking charges in town. We could get off only a few steps from the RY. And so to lunch it was. I was going to drink my usual water until the other two were mulling over  the cocktail list .I decided I wasn't going to be the odd one out. We had a lovely lunch and all choose the warm chicken and mustard coleslaw as our many course- sorry no photo on that as we had already eaten half of it before we remembered we had forgot to take a photo - blame the cocktail.
I started with ham hock with quail egg and homemade piccalilli and toasted monkey bread. Only as I write this I wonder if it was called monkey bread as it might have had peanut in it. it was delicious no the less. Christine had the most amazing fruit cake with Ampleforth Abbey alcohol added with Yorkshire cheese and a pot of butter too.
It was really nice of Nick to come out of the very busy kitchen to take time to speak with us . It was very busy and buzzing with conferences and people enjoying the food and surroundings.
We would all certainly go back again.


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