Trip to York

As mentioned in my last post, Castle Howard, we went to York back in April 2018. York was my home for four happy years whilst at university. I met my wife there. I met my best friend there. I also used to go clubbing on a Wednesday night at a student-friendly nightclub that is now a gentleman’s club… But that’s a different story. I have very fond memories of York as a city but I never did a lot of the touristy stuff when I was there. This trip was a chance to tick some of these boxes and show Piglet (well before he could fully comprehend the context of such a discovery) some of the relevant haunts of his now existence.

I always get nervous about travelling with Piglet for a decent getaway. It’s very easy to manage Piglet’s allergens when you’re in complete control of all the food he eats. But it’s obviously completely unreasonable to live on that basis. We had done some research into good/bad places to eat and found some pretty sure-hits for at least some of our meals out: Ask Italian (as with many of the Italian chains) has a comprehensive allergen menu and will do vegan cheese as a substitute; a vegan restaurant eliminates at least one of the allergens etc…

Ask Italian was our first night in York. Chosen partially for the allergen reasons mentioned above but mostly because it’s where my wife and I had our first date, about 13 years ago. Also the venue is incredible as the restaurant is located in York Assembly rooms which is a restored Georgian function room with marble columns and low hung chandeliers. I would strongly recommend that anyone who goes to York eats there at least once.

After the experiences of Castle Howard, we were particularly sensitive about finding places to eat that we could feel confident would know their allergens. To my surprise, a Nepalese Gurkha restaurant had a very clear menu (allergens printed on the main menu!) and delicious food to boot. We also cooked at our rented apartment more than we might otherwise have done. That said, there were two surprise findings that I thought was worth mentioning:

The first started out as just a coffee. Brew and Brownie is a small cafe/coffee shop between the Minster and Museum Gardens. I can’t remember how we saw it, but we found out that it did coffee with alternative milks and tried it out of chance. Alternative milks in coffee shops is a rare treat. Both my wife and I are big coffee fiends but obviously cow’s milk is off the table and the standard substitute is soya milk. Some places will now offer coconut milk, although this often contains soya and weirdly oat milk seems to trigger an allergic reaction in Piglet for reasons we’ve never understood. What attracted us to Brew and Brownie was that they served almond milk.

In short, my almond milk flat white (an unfortunate consequence of allergens is that your options can sound unnecessarily fancy/pretentious) was so good that we were back there 18 hours later, i.e. as soon as they opened, for breakfast. They did a selection of porridge toppings and offered almond milk porridge by default! This, again, was so good that we were eating the same thing made at home for the next two weeks solid!

The second highlight was a cafe just outside the centre. We had ended up going for a walk on our last morning in York. Lunchtime was starting to draw near, we hadn’t yet chosen anywhere and the area we’d ended up in was limited for options. We ended up on Bishopthorpe road and a couple of cafes looked like our best options. We tried one place (I can’t remember the name now) and they seemed to make quite a hash of finding out whether their bread would be suitable before we’d ordered anything. The second place was The Pig and Pastry, a very busy and obviously popular cafe in the heart of the street.

I queued up to speak to someone about our allergies; aware of the nuisance my questions were likely to cause. To my utter delight the person I spoke to couldn’t have been more helpful. She happily talked me through a few of the options and checked any of the areas she was at all unsure of (promising me she’d double check whatever we did finally order before it went through). As it turned out their bread was fine (a lot of bread contains soya flour) and many of the options on their huge blackboard were available to us. We all had brunch-like options and each was delicious. For a small place that obviously doesn’t just share the same menu with a chain of outlets they were completely on top of their allergens and wonderfully accommodating.

Overall, it was lovely to take Piglet up to York and experience the city as a family of tourists (it’s very different to experiencing it as a 20-something student). I’m sure we will go back again as he gets older and there are certainly some places I am looking forward to returning to.