Food ✪✪✪✪ Ambience ✪✪✪✪
Service ✪✪✪✪✪
68 Marygate
York
YO30 7BH
No phone number
www.rootsyork.com
Accessibility? Yes
Gluten free? Yes
“It’s not you. You’re great. Honestly. No, no, you don’t need to change anything, I promise. Really, it’s not you: it’s me!”
I always thought this was the sort of pathetic line that men - well, mostly men - trot out when they want to break up with someone, but don’t have testicular fortitude to tell the dumpee the truth. Far, far better to refer to some ambiguous failing of the self than shoulder the responsibility for someone else’s distress. That's always been my excuse anyhow.
But once or twice of late, when faced with a particular type of modern British cookery, I’ve wondered whether my slightly muted response might not be the food’s fault, but my own. Is there something I’m just not getting? Why, when I’m going in fully primed to have my socks blown off am I coming out with them still firmly inside my shoes?
The type of food and restaurant I’m talking about here is one which takes its time and place seriously, which thinks carefully about ingredients and preparations, often to the point of growing, making, or preserving them itself. In Northern England that means acknowledging the shortness of the growing season with creative thrift, perhaps alongside a focus on high quality dairy and meats, and certainly an interest in preserving and fermenting. Lake Road Kitchen in Windermere does this sort of thing. I couldn’t wait to eat there, expecting a minor epiphany, but found it... just nice. And so then to Roots in York, the second restaurant from Tommy Banks, which was, well... just very nice.
