Overnight revolution
Meat and fish dominate the menu at the Pearly Cow in York, a redesigned hotel restaurant with grand ambitions, writes Jill Turton. Pictures by James Hardisty.
IN 2022 the Grange Hotel, a handsome Regency mansion on Clifton in York, was bought by three brothers, Tristan, Tom and James Guest, who transformed it from traditional chintz to contemporary chic. And if your name is Guest, what else would you call it but the Guest House, one of a trio of boutique hotels the brothers have created in Margate and Bath, with Brighton due to open next year.
The grey brick and porticoed entrance remains unchanged, but inside it’s had a total redesign. Black-painted walls in reception continue up the elegant, winding staircase. If you like your violins mounted on the wall, you’ll be right at home here. Huge mirrors and abstract art are hanged in the Marmalade Lounge, a more traditional bar and an attractive panelled dining room. You may have spotted their cargo bike on York station. It’s there to meet guests and cycle their luggage to the hotel while the guests take the ten-minute stroll to the hotel. A nice eco-touch.
If you think you have heard all this before, you may well have read it here. I reported on the new No 1 Guest House soon after it opened and, while I found the fish pie and Eton mess perfectly sound, it had nothing very distinctive to say. Then, no sooner had it appeared in print than they launched the Pearly Cow. It’s had a modest redecoration, removing the display of white china and furnishing it with new banquettes and dark wood tables (rather too close together), all of which has made it more relaxed, less self-conscious.
The brothers launched it with some pizzazz in April – a celebration party, a lavish press lunch and food parcels sent out to journalists. Their aim was to replace the dead hand of traditional hotel dining with a distinctive standalone restaurant, to get residents to stay in rather than eat out and equally to attract people in the city to walk a mile out of town.
Judging by the full restaurant on a recent Saturday night, they may well have achieved their aim. Though as one York restaurateur once told me: “It’s easy to fill your restaurant on Friday or Saturday night, it’s filling it Monday to Thursday that matters.” Time will tell, but based on our dinner they’ve created an interesting menu that is worth considering in the catalogue of York restaurants.
The menu boldly divides dishes into “Fire and Ice”. As you might guess from the name, the Pearly Cow goes big on meat, cooked over fire, ie charcoal. The restaurant claims a lot for its 45-day salt-aged beef, even having it hanging in a fridge in the dining room. Certainly the steaks swinging by our table looked the full nine yards, nicely caramelised, served with a strip of bone marrow and a peppercorn or bearnaise sauce. There was lamb too, three generous loin chops with tomato and broad beans. It was good, but it was those steaks that looked the business.
There’s fish too, a sweet, fillet of halibut, gently treated, given a crunchy hazelnut topping and cooked to perfection. Beneath it, thinly sliced spuds and poached fennel.
But if I’m honest, my best dish of the night was a side of superb beef fat chips. Do you need an explanation? Double fried to perfection, crunchy outside, soft inside with a mustard and mayo dip. Less thrilling was a side of “seasonal greens”, which amounted to a lot of mange tout, two pieces of long-stemmed broccoli and a couple of croutons.
And ice? Several dishes are served over crushed ice including poached lobster with mango and basil; cured salmon with crème fraîche and a clean fresh salad of tiger prawns with orange, pickled beetroot and the bitter leaves of purple chicory – though three prawns felt a bit mean for a tenner.
The tuna tartare, by contrast, was generous and fabulous: cubes of tuna combined with soy, bonito and sour cream. A great entry-level dish for anyone nervous about raw fish.
Raw beef appears in the celebrated beef tartare with oyster cream, beef jam, Exmoor caviar and charred sourdough, the dish mailed to journalists prior to opening. At £15, we pass on it in favour of the charred mackerel with
pomegranate and fennel at a more manageable £10.
At dessert, the white chocolate parfait was pleasant enough, though no more, while the raspberry soufflé took a full 15 minutes that was worth waiting for; delicate, light as air and perfectly risen, served with a little jug of raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream.
Wines start at £33 and rise into the hundreds. Service is spot on with a knowledgeable staff and it’s worth asking their help when choosing the starters that come in various sizes and prices. Don’t do as we did and order one taco to share. We should have guessed that at £3.50 it was going to be small. It was small but heavenly. Creamy salt cod and parsley mayonnaise sitting inside a crisp taco shell that fractures on every bite.
There are bigger more spectacular dishes specially made for sharing. If you are splashing the cash, there is the seafood platter served in a mighty clam shell filled with crushed ice for £24 per person or the beef rib, a 36oz (that’s over 1kg) salt-aged beef for two at £85. And if afternoon tea is not your thing, how about Afternoon Sea – an extravaganza of prawns, oysters, mussels, crab and smoked salmon scones at £38 each? You can add bottomless rosé for £20 per head.
Pearly Cow is expensive, of course it is. Meat and fish don’t come cheap anywhere, and there is that refurbishment to pay for, but if you do come here, rest assured this is no stuffy hotel dining room and if it’s all too pricey, consider the three-course Sunday lunch at a very reasonable £36 a head. And if that’s still too much, there’s always a portion of those beef fat chips.
The Pearly Cow, 1 Clifton, York YO30 6AA, www. pearlycow.co.uk. Dinner for two, including a bottle of wine and service, £180.