The Observer
Jay Rayner headed to a garden centre on the edge of Harrogate to sample a
“late-career venture” from Frances Atkins, who for two decades, was chef-
proprietor at the highly regarded Yorke Arms up on the moors at Ramsgill.
Now 74 – “I know this because she told me, unasked, as a way of explaining
what she regards as her limited trading hours” (mostly breakfast and lunch,
closed Sundays and Mondays) – Frances told Jay she couldn’t just retire: “‘I’m like a hamster on a wheel, I can’t stop.’”
And she remains a whizz in the kitchen, knocking out “Yorkshire portions” of food that is “gorgeous to behold”.
“Three sizeable cubes of pork belly have the crispiest of cracklings and the
softest of meat. They stand in an honour guard around a cylinder of the
smoothest of black puddings. So all the superlatives… It’s both precise and
generous cookery.”
