The Box Tree, 35-37 Church Street, Ilkley, West Yorkshire (01943 608 484). Dinner for two, including wine and service, £150
The morning after I ate at the Box Tree in Ilkley, Michelin announced it had been awarded a star. I am pathetically sentimental about old restaurants - aah, the smell of the veloute - and on that level, the news was pleasing. The Box Tree was once a standard bearer for gastronomy in Britain. Under owners Malcolm Reid and Colin Long and chefs Michael Lawson and Michael Truelove, it celebrated an intense style of bourgeois cooking and became one of the first places in the country to secure two Michelin stars. This was where Marco Pierre White started.
But in recent years, it has fallen on tough times. The outrageously camp decor - a fantasy cottage - had become shabby, and the food had lost its lustre.
Eventually both stars went.
Late last year it was taken over by Leeds chef Simon Gueller, who made his name at Rascasse. Surely he could turn it around? The good news is that he and his wife Rena have really resuscitated this lovely Yorkshire stone house. The cottage feel has been retained, but there is a sophisticated, modern touch to the decor, with its beige-fabric walls and halogen downlighters. It works.
Unfortunately the food doesn't, at least not yet. Part of the problem is the price. Go to the website and you'll see a starter of scallops at £12. Get to Ilkley and suddenly it's £16. Turbot is £19.50 on the website, £27 on the menu. Pigeon: £22 as against £26. The cheapest virtual main course is £17. In real life it's £24. This substantial difference is at best careless and at worst a sleight of hand. It raises the bar, which the kitchen fails to vault. The food element of our bill came to £60 each. A £30 bottle of wine and a few other drinks and we were staring at a bill of £180. Ouch. (There is a set menu at £28 for three courses).
The menu has a consciously old-fashioned feel to it, a mixture of Seventies Robert Carrier and Eighties Marco Pierre White, presumably to echo the restaurant's distinguished history, and I took it on its own terms by ordering a seafood mariniere followed by tournedos Rossini. The mariniere was underpowered.
There was no depth to the liquor, and the fish had been treated with such a light hand the scallops were on nodding terms with raw. It wasn't pleasurable to eat. My tournedos might have been OK if it clearly hadn't sat under the pass lights for too long. A skin had formed on the Madeira sauce and the disc of brioche beneath the beef fillet was soggy. The turned baby vegetables were pretty to look at, but no more.
My companion did better with his ravioli of veal sweetbreads followed by pot-roast pigeon. Both showed an understanding of the fundamentals, but neither sung out. I finished with a boozy prune and Armagnac souffle, which I ate first at Rascasse, and it stands the test of time.
A refashioned creme brulee, the creme a kind of mountain peak with the top cut off and glazed, seemed innovation for its own sake. Service was fine, though they failed the wine test; every single one of them tried to pour, even though we said we'd do it ourselves. And there's piped music which went from Robbie Williams' 'Swing When You're Winning' to Jamie Cullum's 'Twentysomething'. All they needed was Norah Jones and they'd have had the unholy trinity of cliched dining-room music. It's a small point but adds to the impression that this is a restaurant which, while charging top dollar, has still to play in the premiere league.
