The Yorke Arms, Ramsgill, North Yorkshire (01423 755 243).
Meal for two, including wine and service, £90-£130.
My wife, who is a sadist, used to make me go country walking. She thought this was very funny; I would end up on the top of some windswept bluff, shouting at her retreating back: 'For God's sake, woman. Don't you know I'm Jewish? Can't we take a cab?' She, in turn, would promise me treats if I made it to the end without crying, though in those days the treats hardly deserved the name. We'd end up in the sort of pub where strangers were stared at like they had a nasty case of psoriasis, eating a tyre-sized Yorkshire pudding with all the texture of lino and none of the utility, smothered in frogspawn-like gravy with sausages made from pigs that had died of old age just before the introduction of decimalisation.
It would be better now. Doubtless some of you will write to me to complain about the horrible things that have been done to old country pubs recently - all those disgusting exercises in tasteful redecoration and the dreadful introduction of menus full of nice things to eat - but I approve. Certainly if there had been a place like the Yorke Arms at Ramsgill awaiting me at the end of a long country walk, I might even have feigned enthusiasm.
Personally, I preferred arriving by car, after a glorious drive along the valley floor, looping gently past the reservoir, hugging the female curves and clefts of the hills, to this handsome Yorkshire stone building. Everything about the Yorke Arms bellows good taste, from the gentle smell of woodsmoke as you enter, through to the sturdy, pub-classic dining room, to the food on the plate. Frances Atkins has been cooking here for years, sending out dishes that make a virtue of prime ingredients without being in thrall to them. For the past six years it has held a Michelin star, and with that comes a certain element of ingredient frottage - brightly coloured purees flashed across plates like go-faster stripes; fronds and curls of vegetation to paint the picture to the edge of the frame - but none of it is allowed more importance than the imperative of flavour.
We went for lunch, which is the time to be there. In the evening, main courses loiter around the £25 mark, with some topping £30, whereas at lunch you get three courses for £25 all in, from a short, changing menu. For us it started with an amuse of field green parsley veloute, with a tiny quenelle of cream flavoured with parsley root and a stick of salty anchovy, as if a salsa verde had been taken apart and rebuilt into something altogether more luscious. Next, for me, two pieces of greaseless battered skate, with a pile of carefully picked Whitby bay crab, the whole dressed with lime and curls of deep-fried chilli pepper. It was light and bright and refreshing. A millefeuille of sweetbreads, made with crisp leaves of puff pastry, was a darker, more savoury affair, the yin to the skate's yang, but lifted by the addition of pickled vegetables and artichokes.
The same light-and-dark was there in the choices of main courses. On the one plate, slices of deep-red venison with soft pieces of the same, braised, alongside a length of dense black pudding. There were wild mushrooms and leeks and discs of impeccable Lyonnais potatoes. It was meat cookery that celebrated the hills outside. On the other plate, a slab of cod, dressed with slices of truffle, alongside two sensitively seared scallops and a few greens. It was a great dish, let down only by the inclusion of a fish that is now an endangered species.
The only other niggle is the dessert course, which offered a choice only of cheese or something sweet. It was a very nice something sweet: a creamy delice of rhubarb and blueberry, with a sesame tuile, vanilla ice cream and the late burst of ginger, but it seemed a little tight not to have given us a second option.
No matter. This was a very good lunch indeed, in the sort of surroundings that can't help but make things feel special. And after good coffee, and tiny tablets of fudge, we laced up our boots and set off for a long hike over the grand hills of Olde England for the betterment of our souls. Oh all right, we didn't. We got back in the car and hit the road to York. Our souls were already in fine fettle, thank you very much.
