The young chef, born in the nearby market town of Pocklington, explains that elderflower can be used to infuse a fermented kombucha drink. Pineapple weed \u2014 its taste akin to its namesake fruit \u2014 adds sweetness to a dessert. The shoots of an Alexander plant, \u201ca forgotten vegetable\u201d brought to Britain by the Romans, is nice stir-fried with seafood, says Josh, as he peels back its succulent layers.<\/p>\n
Using foraged \u2014 and pickled or preserved \u2014\u00a0herbs to flavour British, and often Yorkshire, produce is a strong suit for M\u00fdse. Its 18-course tasting menu features a marinated shrimp dish made with piquant salted rhubarb, and an earthy Jerusalem artichoke ice cream laced with nectar-sweet birch sap syrup from the historic Castle Howard Estate<\/a>, nearby.<\/p>\n M\u00fdse\u2019s innovative use of the Howardian Hills\u2019 larder is part of a vibrant local food scene \u2014 one of six Michelin-starred restaurants in the county, it\u2019s a short drive west of Malton, Yorkshire\u2019s self-styled culinary capital and home to countless artisan producers. All reasons why The Good Food Guide<\/a> named this 79sq-mile National Landscape, along with the North York Moors town of Helmsley, its most exciting food destination in 2024.<\/p>\n There is a cosy snug at restaurant M\u00fdse, an Anglo-Saxon word meaning \u2018eating at the table\u2019.<\/p>\n Photograph by M\u00fdse<\/p>\n Swinton Park Hotel sits within 200 acres of game-rich grounds.<\/p>\n Photograph by Steve Ramsden<\/p>\n Eager to explore further, I follow undulating roads around the town of Masham, on the fringes of the Yorkshire Dales, to reach the castellated Swinton Park Hotel<\/a>. The Georgian property\u2019s Manhattan-size estate is a rich source of meat, trout and game, while its four-acre kitchen garden provides around 35% of the produce for its two restaurants, plus Bivouac Caf\u00e9<\/a> and Swinton Cookery School<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re spoilt for choice,\u201d says bearded Scot Struan Macintyre as we stroll the garden. Executive chef of Swinton Park\u2019s Samuel\u2019s Restaurant<\/a> at the time of my visit, he\u2019s since moved to the Grantham Arms<\/a> in nearby Boroughbridge. \u201cWe get beautiful salad leaves, figs, kale, edible flowers and everything in between. It\u2019s our job to make the most of it.\u201d A recent \u2018estate-to-plate\u2019 delivery included a 70lb haul of asparagus, Struan tells me, as we pass straw bales planted with potatoes and hotel baths repurposed as plant containers.<\/p>\n Sustainable water usage and plant diversity have taken priority over aesthetics while transforming the plot from a tangle of thistles to an edible Eden. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t get it in neat rows, like the Victorians, without huge amounts of labour,\u201d says head gardener Dame Susan Cunliffe-Lister, whose son Mark, the 4th Earl of Swinton, runs the estate. \u201cAnd, actually, this has worked much better,\u201d the smiley octogenarian adds, plucking me a bonbon-sweet strawberry. \u201cWe grow unusual things like Siberian kiwifruits, Saskatoon berries and mashua, a climbing nasturtium with peppery tubers. Our garden is full of bees\u00a0and butterflies.\u201d Beside us, a mass of purple-hued chive flowers is abuzz.<\/p>\n Later, in the hotel\u2019s contemporary restaurant The Terrace<\/a>, I taste these pom-pom-like blooms \u2014 served in a tempura batter, with a punchy garlic emulsion. The next course is equally innovative and infinitely richer: a silky duck liver and Madeira custard, presented with a granola of toasted oats, sweet-dried cherries and a buttery, duck fat brioche.<\/p>\n Game is ubiquitous across the heathered North York Moors. The next day I drive east past fields bristling with red-faced pheasants, and after 30-odd miles reach The Star Inn at Harome<\/a> \u2014 which is, appropriately enough, Michelin-starred. \u201cMy dad would shoot game, and local butchers and fishermen would swap meat, crab and lobster for the day\u2019s shooting,\u201d says the Star\u2019s gregarious chef-patron Andrew Pern, as he shows me around the thatched 14th-century property. \u201cWe were surrounded by this brilliant pantry.\u201d A farmer\u2019s son and former rugby player raised near Whitby, Andrew started helping in the kitchen aged nine, when his mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. \u201cI used [American chef] Robert Carrier recipes to make things like pheasant fricassee and woodcock terrine. A lot more appealing than having my hand up a\u00a0sheep\u2019s backside,\u201d he says with a laugh.<\/p>\n The Star Inn at Harome is a Michelin-starred pub.<\/p>\n Photograph by Loop Images Ltd, Alamy<\/p>\n After training in classic French cookery, Andrew honed what he describes as a \u201crich man, poor man\u201d approach, adding luxurious touches to humble Yorkshire recipes and ingredients. A prime example is the way he transforms seasonal North Yorks Moors game into a ragout, with embers taglioni, Yorkshire blue, pickled ox tongue and garden lovage.<\/p>\n I sit fireside for a potted duck rillette starter, packed with juicy gooseberries and served with toothsome rounds of malt bread with black cherry ketchup and sticky treacle walnuts. For mains, I relish the sweet and briny flavours of a perfectly seared North Sea turbot fillet \u2014 topped with a plump poached langoustine, crispy calamari and a rich cockle- and mussel-flavoured sauce \u2014 and start to feel distinctly envious of the locals who get to eat here regularly. Over a fantastic finale of apple crumble and Yorkshire rhubarb tartelette with stem ginger custard, I learn more about the Grade II-listed inn\u2019s storied walls.<\/p>\n After a 2021 fire that made national news headlines, The Star had its smoke-damaged \u2018Mouseman\u2019 furniture \u2014 wooden pieces featuring life-sized carvings of mice \u2014 restored by artisans related to their original craftsman, Robert Thompson, who refurbished the pub in the 1930s. Earlier chapters in the inn\u2019s history feature visits by the 17th-century English Civil War leader Oliver Cromwell, as well as mead-guzzling monks en\u00a0route to nearby monasteries.<\/p>\n My next stop, 10 miles west, faces the gothic ruins of one: 12th-century Byland Abbey<\/a>. Its namesake Abbey Inn <\/a>is the most affordable of three celebrated restaurants owned by chef Tommy Banks. I check in to one of three homely guest rooms before heading just over a mile northwest to its sister restaurant-with-rooms, the Michelin-starred Black Swan at Oldstead<\/a>, to tour the regenerative no-dig market garden that supplies the menus at both properties. \u201cWe\u2019re seasonal, but not how you might imagine,\u201d says Alice Power, The Black Swan at Oldstead\u2019s charismatic head chef. \u201cThere\u2019s the time of abundance when there\u2019s lots growing; the preservation season when you\u2019re squirrelling away as much good stuff as possible; then the hunger gap when you lean on those preserves.\u201d<\/p>\n The Byland’s Abbey Inn offers a sharing dish of c\u00f4te de boeuf.<\/p>\n Photograph by Andrew Hayes-Watkins<\/p>\n Later, we visit the family\u2019s preservation and fermentation stores, its shelves heaving with infused vinegars and honeys, and muslin-topped jars of miso. Alice shows me bags of green strawberries \u2014 salted in a similar way to Japanese umeboshi plums so they might \u201cbring bright flavours\u201d during the darker months \u2014 and opens hot cupboards to reveal caramelising \u2018blackened\u2019 apples.<\/p>\n During the 12-course tasting menu at The Black Swan \u2014 which also holds a Michelin green star, in recognition of its sustainable practices \u2014 I see this produce come to life. A brioche-like appetiser with fermented onion and silky chevin goat\u2019s cheese packs a punch, while neon-green, garlic-drizzled nasturtium sits atop a surprising savoury porridge made with fermented grains, barbecued leeks and oozy confit hen\u2019s egg. Standout sweets include a cooling yoghurt palate cleanser topped with blackcurrant leaf juice and frozen spruce tips \u2014 sweet, sour and zesty, all at once \u2014 and an elderflower sorbet, sprinkled with granita, which sings of the Yorkshire countryside.<\/p>\n The next morning, I take a bumpy utility vehicle ride across the Banks\u2019 family\u2019s Oldstead Grange Farm, which has a phenomenal vantage point over the pretty patchwork of fields that make up the Vale of York as well as the Kilburn White Horse, a 318ft-long figure cut into the hillside. I see real animals, too \u2014 including a herd of Dexter cows, whose flavourful beef goes into the Abbey Inn\u2019s signature juicy burgers, and woolly Mangalitsa pigs, dubbed \u2018the Wagyu of pork\u2019 for their highly marbled meat, up to 20 times more expensive than a regular pork cut.<\/p>\n Livestock farming runs deep in this county\u2019s DNA. My last stop is the market town of Malton, where animals have been bought and sold since the 18th century. Its former meat market The Shambles is now full of antique stores and independent boutiques. At the end of this lane, the deep melodies of a brass band reverberate as I reach a food market in the town square, its stalls brimming with thick-crusted pies, local cider and the wensleydale cheeses so beloved by animated national treasure Wallace.<\/p>\n Around the edges of the square, a shop window full of taxidermy game catches my eye \u2014 Derek Fox Butchers<\/a>, run by the same family for more than 185 years. Once, game dealers like this would have raced to get the first grouse of the season down to London \u2014\u00a0but today some of the finest restaurants in\u00a0the country are on their doorstep.<\/p>\n Four restaurants to try in North Yorkshire<\/p>\n 1. <\/b>Pignut & The Hare<\/b><\/a> 2. <\/b>The Abbey Inn<\/b><\/a> 3. <\/b>The Durham Ox Inn<\/b><\/a> 4. <\/b>Samuel\u2019s Restaurant<\/b><\/a> How to do itThe Talbot Hotel, Malton has rooms from \u00a3110, B&B, while For more info visit talbotmalton.co.uk<\/a> swintonestate.com<\/a> visitnorthyorkshire.com<\/a><\/p>\n This story was created with the support of North York Moors National Park, Talbot Hotel, Swinton Park Hotel.<\/p>\n Published in the December 2025 issue of\u00a0National Geographic Traveller\u00a0(UK).<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Esmeyork3.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Swinton](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/esmehotelportrait.png\"\/)
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Tom and Laurissa Heywood closed an acclaimed restaurant in Helmsley to reimagine Scawton\u2019s 12th-century inn-with-rooms, and the couple\u2019s \u2018wastage course\u2019 \u2014\u00a0made using offcuts \u2014 has become their trademark. All ingredients are ethically and locally sourced, so Yorkshire chicken, brill caught by small-scale fishers, and foraged or home-grown vegetables and herbs all make their way into this signature dish. Tasting menus from \u00a365 per person.<\/p>\n
Dexter beef burgers, hogget shepherd\u2019s pie and rare-breed charcuterie from the Banks\u2019 farm are some of the standout dishes at this 19th-century inn, its cosy rooms and nooks hung with old Yorkshire maps. Linger over a pint of Masham\u2019s Black Sheep Best bitter, or try soft drinks and cocktails \u2014 like a rhubarb and lavender negroni \u2014 made using harvested and preserved ingredients. Mains from\u00a0\u00a325.<\/p>\n
The prime Yorkshire chateaubriand is a Sunday favourite at Crayke village\u2019s 300-year-old hilltop inn, which has stupendous views over the Vale of York. Eclectic dishes like ham hock terrine with Easingwold piccalilli and gruy\u00e8re-topped queen scallops are on offer in the wood-beamed dining room, while for afters try cr\u00eapes suzette with Ryeburn of Helmsley ice cream. Evening mains from \u00a317.<\/p>\n
The floor-to-ceiling windows of this elegant dining room look out onto the Swinton Estate \u2014\u00a0the source of seasonal \u2018fur and feather\u2019 game, plus kitchen garden produce. A mussel starter might come with a moreish Yorkshire cider and smoked pancetta sauce, while the Nidderdale farm chicken \u2014\u00a0featuring a roasted breast and chicken leg croquette, topped with black garlic ketchup \u2014 is a standout main. Finish with the gin-infused Yorkshire strawberry trifle. Evening mains from \u00a332.<\/p>\n
the Swinton Park Hotel, near Masham, has rooms from \u00a3303, B&B.<\/p>\n