29-05-2025
William Sitwell reviews Roots, York: ‘So heavenly it could calm the wildest loon'
Tommy Banks's empire includes a Michelin-starred restaurant-with-rooms on the North York Moors, an old inn by Byland Abbey, a food delivery service, a posh spot in York called Roots (also starred), a recently launched pub group, and a canned wine business. The tinnies are on the wine list at Roots, naturally, but the staff (or indeed anyone in the world, as far as I know) are yet to figure out a way to open them with flair.
Sommeliers can yank out corks with majestic creativity and attempt theatrics with screw caps (turning the bottle with a flourish, rather than the cap), but when they bring you a can of wine there is no such drama. Our server settled, understandably, on bringing the tins for show then returning them empty with a filled decanter.
I enjoyed the novelty of a fine-dining establishment offering canned wine. And I enjoyed the wine, too. The Banks Brothers gamay/pinot noir blend is fabulous, all the more so if, like me, you've a train south to catch and can grab some more tins for the journey.
It was one of the things that tempered my dread of the compulsory tasting menu at this converted old inn by the River Ouse. It's a bright room – lots of pale wood, beige walls, panelling. What you might call civic-chic. In fact, the whole place feels like a modern-courthouse-cum-registry-office. With Banks's entrepreneurial mind I'm surprised he doesn't rent the space out in the morning for sentencing and marriages before turning out his food and wine in the afternoon.
Seven courses came our way (you can also opt for a pricier nine-course menu), but were far less painful than feared. First up, salami and hams – meltingly tender, salty palate galvanisers (especially for a wonderful South African wine, The Foundry Roussanne, in glass this time) – followed by bread, a whole, decent loaf of sourdough.
Then the main thematic thrust of the menu: fluffy, creamy froths framing the cured, the pickled and the fermented. A rustic bowl of cloud-like yellowy froth (what they call a 'soup' of Jerusalem artichoke with aged Killeen goat's milk cheese) is a dish that draws folk to Roots from far and wide, a siren call you can succumb to without repercussion, bar obesity. Underneath the froth are mushrooms and fermented grains. It was a complex and delectable dish.
The next frothy offering was bitter, topped by a scallop, caramelised and sliced like a fat hasselback potato. The over-sugary scallop couldn't quite match up to the harsh-tasting foam, though; I'd have preferred the simplicity of a naked scallop.
Then in washed another spumy yellowy sauce, with hints of leek and herbs. This time the bubbles bobbed with pink fir apple potatoes – a lovely celebration of these wonderful tatties, but a dish that left me craving a change of scene.
It came, finally, with the main course dish of venison. This was a plate, all dry dabs of protein, fermented cherry and beetroot, that cried out to be drenched with sauce. Thankfully a spoonful of jus dispatched at the table went some way to avert the sparse look. More thrilling, though, was the accompanying little pastry, delivering croissant flakiness with warm, oozing venison within. So good, so soporific, so rich and heavenly, it could calm the wildest loon. Hand them round to the world's troublemakers and they'd be suing for peace before midnight.
Down went the deer, then a pud of pears with hazelnuts (I searched in vain for the advertised chocolate), and I took myself and my tinnies merrily south.
