Is This Yorkshire’s Most Conscious Tasting Menu? 

North Yorkshire’s Pignut & The Hare opened last year and has since won recognition in the Michelin Guide and three AA Rosettes. Led by Tom and Laurissa Heywood, authors of The Forager’s Table, its food ethos is one rooted in locality and simplicity. And set within a renovated 12th-century coaching inn, it has authentic charm in spades to match – plus, comfy rooms upstairs to bookend your meal. C&TH nabs a table and tries its new full tasting menu where the number of courses change each day and inspiration is drawn from local farmers and fishermen. 

A 12th-century coaching inn is now home to a three AA Rosette restaurant

Inside Yorkshire’s Super Conscious Tasting Menu At Pignut & The Hare

Situated on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors atop Sutton Bank is the medieval Pignut and the Hare, a recently opened restaurant with rooms. These are small but cosy, and recently renovated in cool muted greens, but still peppered with design details that call on its history as a 12th century coaching inn (think iron-wrought wooden doors and overhanging beams). A year on from opening, though, owners Tom and Laurissa Heywood have added even more reason to stay. They’ve created a tasting menu created in response to conversations with local farmers and fishermen – and which showcases just how tasty a premier harvest can be.

Our meal begins at the bar with welcome treats of homemade sweet fudge, and small appetisers made from kitchen off-cuts. From here, it’s a delicious onslaught as presented by a menu printed on self-seeding paper (local wild flowers). 

Tom and Laurissa Heywood are the chef-proprietors of Pignut and the Hare, and authors of The Forager’s Table

The opening course is a colourful plate of wild Whitby sea trout with horseradish, on a bed of foraged herbs and accompanied by crunchy toasted spelt. The celebration of home grown food continues with a roasted beetroot – super earthy. If the food is literally rooted in place, it looks it, too. The Jersey milk bread (homemade, of course) is shaped perhaps unintentionally like the white rose of Yorkshire with a sprinkle of sea salt on top. That comes out with crispy cord fed chicken skin, chicken parfait, and nettle pesto. Local cider is given centrestage with a small hearty bowl of hot mussels – a marriage of land and sea – and then it’s onto a sea bass served with beef fat and cockle hollandaise. Each night there is a full and half menu with the exact number of courses changing as required by the produce and ingredients available; tonight it’s eight. The latter half of this meal is accompanied by a little choice: specifically that of our crockery – guests are asked to pick their knife, from a selection by Helmsley blacksmith Ollie Fulford, ahead of a main Castle Howard mutton dish. The finale is fairy cakes, as inspired by Tom’s earliest baking memories – presented in the cake tin he used with his nan.

Pick your fighter – locally forged knives play a theatrical role in the tasting menu

Beyond being delicious, where this tasting menu excels is in its ability to land a palatable message about food provenance and sustainability for diners. Tom and Laurissa’s website declares that their menus are shaped completely by their suppliers and the local, immediate environment. They’re working with local food producers ranging Helmsley Walled Garden, Moorside Mushrooms, Hodgson Fish and more – and if not, the ingredients are foraged and found in nearby gardens, rivers and hedgerows, later turned into broths, ferments, pickles and sauces to preserve these finds and give their dishes depth. Outside, there’s a wild kitchen garden in the works. And throughout the meal, Laurissa drops by to talk to guests at each table – in an accessible, fun, enthusiastic way. Here is a young, informed and very exciting couple at the helm of bringing emerging regenerative awareness to the kitchen, which quite frankly, is what it’s all about. As they say: ‘sustainability for us isn’t a concept, but a system we work with everyday.’ Right on.

Pignut and the Hare have already been awarded three AA Rosettes, won recognition in the Michelin Guide, and last year won the Craft Guild of Chefs Sustainable Restaurant Award. Trust us when we say that now is your opportunity to visit Michelin standard restaurant which is yet to officially receive its first star – we’re sure it won’t be long. 

C&TH Key Notes

The hero dish… The Castle Howard mutton – served alongside seasonally sunny summer veg, yellison crowdie and int.

The best cocktail… Order the ‘Bananarama’ which is made with pineapple mayweed, lime and sea salt kombucha, Langs banana rum, and Fairfax barrel-aged spiced rum.

The chicest interior detail… Their crockery is all home made pottery from local Rock Garden Ceramics in York and each piece is inspired by nature and function

The dress code… Not too formal – but dress (generally) respectfully.

The table to ask for… A window seat to spy their wild kitchen garden.

BOOK IT

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