Pitch perfect
There’s a new innings in progress at the home of a much-loved former York restaurant. Jill Turton is bowled over by the food and wine at 22 Yards, set up by three cricket enthusiasts.
FOR 27 years, Café Concerto was a charming neighbourhood restaurant in the shadow of York Minster, owned and run by Rozz and Ian Hancox. It had that Nineties regulation décor of pine tables and mismatched chairs and walls papered with yellowing pages of sheet music. They served hearty plates of food and great cakes, all of which contributed to Café Concerto’s status as a York institution. But Covid did for them. The long, narrow dining room was not conducive to social distancing and nine months of closure spelt its demise. Café Concerto closed in 2020.
The building on High Petergate stood forlorn and empty for months, but behind the scenes, this prime site was attracting a lot of interest.
Nevertheless, it took 12 months of negotiation before the new owners were handed the keys. Adrian Stancer, and Richard Townsley, wine merchants and distributors, and an old university friend, Karl Booth, took over the premises and opened in July 2022 with a new wine bar and wine merchants.
If you are a cricket fan, you might have spotted that 22 yards is the length of a cricket pitch, and this cricket-mad trio soon worked out that it was also the length of the dining room from front window to back kitchen. It was no contest; the name of their new wine bar would be 22 Yards.
Out went the stripped pine and sheet music, and in came some smart new tables and rush seated wishbone chairs, but the long narrow room will still be familiar to Concerto regulars.
A clever idea is the feature wall; a blackboard, spread with dinky shelves that each holds a couple of bottles, displaying a changing range of bin-ends, chalked-up with names and prices.
The wine list proper is extensive and distinctive, with plenty by the glass. It’s an opportunity to explore some interesting bottles, though it would help a lot if they included some tasting notes. Prices start at a modest £6 (125cl) glass or £28 a bottle for a Romanian Pinot Noir and peak at a whopping £235 for a white Burgundy, but with plenty of bottles in-between.
I asked my pal and wine enthusiast Helen Scott to cast an eye over the list. I trust Helen, she’s passed Wine and Spirit Educational Trust exams, won several wine competitions and a few years ago more than held her own at the prestigious International Wine Challenge, the prize for winning Christine Austin’s annual Christmas quiz.
She wrote: “22 Yards has a really interesting wine list and the prices seem fair to me. They look like boutique wines from small properties and a good range of styles and territories. Big tick for the offerings by the glass – the biggest range I’ve seen, from entry-level Romanian Pinot Noir to premium white, Burgundy PulignyMontrachet – if you wanted to treat yourself to just one glass, albeit at £20, it’s a good offering.”
So we did just that. The Romanian Pinot
Noir was not available, so we were directed to a bin-end from the blackboard that was good quaffing wine at £6.50. Then we followed Helen’s recommendation and treated ourselves to a glass (just the one between two) of the Marchard de Gramont, Puligny-Montrachet at £29 for 175cl and an eye-watering £123 a bottle.
It was served in a beautiful Burgundy glass that had a generous bowl for the pale golden minerally wine and it was superb. We sipped it through the first of a selection of small plates. Potato pavé – layers of thinly sliced potatoes cooked in duck fat and topped with a layer of the rich, melting, Brie-like, Baron Bigod cheese. It was so lovely that had we known it was just a smallish cube we would have ordered two portions. This is often my gripe with small plates, you never know quite what’s coming. A recent visit here found us inadvertently having bread with every course.
Grumble over, the modish dish of carrots, tahini, yoghurt, coriander, pomegranate, and hazelnuts was better for sharing. A decent size and a winning combination of soft carrots and crunchy pomegranate and nuts, the Mon
trachet becoming ever more rounded when paired with food.
At the other end of the scale, the Pinot Noir, the cheapest tipple on the list, and what my brother-in-law would call “throwing wine”, was a good enough match for the robust ox cheek cottage pie, meltingly gorgeous for its long-cooked beef, topped with a bubbling cheesy mash and roast carrots alongside.
Another dish of barley and mushroom risotto was finished with a slice of tender roast celeriac and a soft egg yolk that when pierced, spilled over the celeriac to serve as a sauce. It was a terrific dish, the kind of thing you might find at York’s top small plate establishment Skosh, but hang on, chef Robin Jackson is exSkosh and I’m guessing, the reason the menu is packed with imaginative, inventive dishes.
It was a raw night for our visit. The pavements were icy and the gritters were out in force, fortunately, we were cosied up in the fug of 22 Yards, feasting on those warming dishes of ox cheek and nutty barley risotto.
It only left us to choose a pudding. Too cold for the chocolate delice with blood orange granita, or the tart tatin with honeycomb clotted ice cream. No, on such a night as this, it had to be the rib-sticking bread and butter pudding.
Not the lightest B&B pudding I’ve ever tasted but rich and creamy and finished with an unnecessary yet gorgeous dollop of chocolate and mascarpone.
So thank you Café Concerto for a great innings and 22 Yards who on this evidence, have many more runs to come.
22 Yards, 21 High Petergate, York YO1 7EN, www.22yardswine.com. Dinner for two with a bottle of wine and service, approx. £85. Open: Mon-Sat: 12pm-11pm, Sun: 12pm-10.30pm.