Pub of the week

THE BUCK INN, WRELTON

I bet you’ve passed it dozens of times. The tiny village of Wrelton is just off the Pickering to Kirkbymoorside road.

It’s perfectly nice but you probably never had reason to visit there. However, I think I may have found you one. The only pub in the village is the Buck Inn and it’s just been added to my list of must-stop places; pubs I can’t pass without stopping for a specific dish.

The menu appears very good – mainly steaks, pies, curries and the usual pub fodder. Specials of venison and belly pork and puds like caramel and amoretti charlotte certainly suggest someone reasonably adept is running the kitchen. But from now on though, I will be stopping off for one dish alone – black pudding and bacon.

I shall skip that mine arrived without the fried egg the menu promised it came topped with, because the ingredients that did arrive were so sublime.

The black pudding is so soft and crumbly and delicious, the bacon is so tasty and high quality and the gravy is so meaty that an egg dropped on top may risk gilding the lily. It’s £6.25 spent the best way imaginable. I urge you to try it.

So, a new pin has been added on my gastronomic map of the county. I can’t pass Sledmere without stopping for Yorkshire puds at the Triton; I can’t pass Millington without stopping for a pie at the Gait; I can’t pass Huggate without stopping for a hot beef sarnie at the Wolds Inn; and now I can’t pass Wrelton without stopping for black pudding and bacon at the Buck. No wonder my journey times are getting a bit ridiculous.

■ The Buck Inn, Wrelton Cliff Road, Wrelton, Pickering, YO18 8PJ. Tel: 01751 477753.