Pudsey Restaurant Guide

“The best… a real pub, with good ales and wine and unbelievable food!” – Gareth & Laura Ostick’s “fabulous” boozer looks just like a normal pub but chef Tom Parker’s cuisine is anything but and “incredible value”. “Glorious seasonal fare is served by a young and enthusiastic team and washed down with interesting wines” either from a four-course menu for £65 per person; or a five-course selection for £85 per person. Some dishes – Herdwick Lamb with olive oil mash – are founded in tradition, but the vegetarian option in particular is a far cry from it, with dishes such as Pickled Cucumber with Wasabi, Buttermilk and Dill.

2022 Review: “Great food and also a sense that they are putting back into the community” inspires support for this pub-with-rooms on the village green. Run as a youth-focused social enterprise, supporting young people to access training and paid work experience, it has won a string of awards over its almost ten years in operation. In summer, its ‘Incredible Edible Beer Garden’ comes into its own: almost an acre in size and with lots of interest as well as outside seating.

“Gosh, that was good!!” – Mark Kemp’s “relaxed small plates restaurant in Sowerby Bridge” (a converted boozer) excites nothing but full-on raves from reporters for its “welcoming environment” and “refreshing”, “unfailingly impressive” food at “incredible value prices”. One brave Lancastrian who “put his armour on and risked a trip to Yorkshire to sneak in a Wednesday lunch” only wishes his own county had somewhere like this – an unusual outfit which offers “randomly eclectic, tapas-y food taking in Spain, Yorkshire and Southeast Asia”. “Service is just how you want it” too – “never intrusive but at your elbow when you do”. Top Menu Tip – “Cauliflower and manchego croquetas were merely a foil to an eye-opening Worcestershire sauce caramel; Bahn me prawn toasts are a really superb dish; Moroccan spiced lamb is pulled and comes with pillowy maneesh bread, a rather heavy hummus, dee-licous giant couscous, lightly pickled onions and other stuff. Best posh kebab I’ve had in a long time”.

Well known as “a gorgeous getaway spot” ten minutes’ drive from Halifax, this old corn mill has served as a “warm and cosy” inn for more than a century, with a “lovely restaurant” that offers a “good range” of modern British dishes “cooked to a high standard” (available in either tasting or à la carte formats, plus sandwiches at lunchtime). There are 11 “beautiful rooms upstairs” for overnight stays.

Opinions are somewhat divided this year on this famous pub with rooms in the Ribble Valley, where chef Steve Smith departed in mid 2024 for the bright lights of Manchester. Fans say its production of “Michelin-starred service, wines and food, all without the aspirations and fuss”, continues unabated and feel “you don’t get much better than this for quality and value”. But it also inspired a couple of disappointments this year, including amongst former fans, who perceive “a lack of heart or passion” to recent meals, or who have found some dishes “uninspired and poorly prepared”. Hopefully teething problems?

2023 Review: “Simplicity” combines with “top quality” at Carlow-born Breda Murphy’s deli-restaurant, a popular destination in the Ribble Valley since 2006 for her Anglo-Irish home-style cooking. “At first it feels overly conservative, but every dish is perfectly cooked, often with a small and interesting twist such as thick-cut lime and soy-cured salmon.”

2024 Review: Chef-patron Eric Paxman trained under Marco Pierre White in London and Bill Granger in Australia, and has cooked for luminaries including Arnold Schwarzenegger, who vowed ‘I’ll be back’ – a sentiment shared by numerous guests at the venture he opened in his hometown 14 years ago. “Lunch and early-bird evening specials are an exceptional bargain”.

2024 Review: “An airy space with unusual dishes and great cooking” – this comfortable independent opposite the civic hall scored highly in this year’s annual diners’ poll. The focus is on small plates, some of them very original: who’s for ‘honey, soy and gochujang roast carrots, toasted sesame, with tahini satay’?

“Great Yorkshire-Italian cuisine” from York-born Poppy Cartwright: a former fashion designer who was inspired to cook by her Sicilian grandmother and launched a home-based supper club with her husband, Matthew Shelton. Now in a former Victorian butchers shop, they serve a set five-course meal (with vegetarian options) on Friday and Saturday nights, using their own hand-made bowls and plates (they also host cooking and art classes on the premises).

2024 Review: A “great fit-out” of a former bank has resulted in this very cool destination, run by two alumni of the Moorcock Inn at Sowerby Bridge. It’s “a lovely place to while away a couple of hours” (in the company of your canine if you like), where the concise menu revolves around punchy and “great small plates, including charcuterie and cheese” and there’s “a dependable wine list too”.

On the ground floor of the city’s stunning, Gothic Revival Town Hall, this all-day restaurant (breakfast, brunch, afternoon tea, dinner) offers a menu of hearty, traditional Lancashire dishes listed as ‘Rochdale Town Hall Classics’ (e.g. Black pudding scotch egg, Braised steak and ale pie). No reports as yet, but in his November 2024 review The Observer’s Jay Rayner was left “slack-jawed” by the architecture and impressed by a civic amenity delivered with a combination of professionalism, good sense, taste and skill (“every town should have one”). Reports please!

The second pizza project from couple Kate & Jim Morgan, whose previous venture, Rudy’s Pizza in Manchester, became such a runaway success that the duo sold it to hospitality giants Mission Mars in 2017 (albeit remaining on as stakeholders as it has spiralled into a nationwide chain). As per its famous predecessor, the order of the day is “perfect pizza” of Neapolitan bent, cooked for just sixty seconds to achieve a perfectly blistered crust – “but don’t skimp on the starters”, which might include arancini and deep-fried olives with house sausage.

This year-old pizzeria from the team behind Shawbridge Cicchetti and Parlour cocktail bar has made an early impression on locals for its good-value offering.