Temptation by the Tun (From Living Northeast)

Temptation by the Tun

11:33am Wednesday 30th June 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

The Three Tuns at Osmotherley is the perfect venue for a family get-together, as Mike Amos discovers.

OSMOTHERLEY is on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors, east of Northallerton, a stone-built and largely unspoiled village despite the great many visitors by car and by foot. The Three Tuns – still known locally as the Mousehole because of its once small size – is one of three pubs, all popular, within 50 yards one of the other.

The front bar was boisterous, probably the Ossie Academicals or some such Sunday morning football team, but boisterousness is what bars are for. At the back is a long, narrow, beamed and stone-flagged restaurant with appealing pine furniture, cheerful and accomplished service and a Sunday lunch menu that offers two courses for £13.95, three for £17.95.

Both boys were home, a treat for mum and dad and an early birthday bash for the little ’un. On the big day he and his brother would be playing football in Nepal for a team called the Richmond Mavericks, whose Latin motto translates as “They don’t like it up ‘em”. Nor, it will be recalled, did the FuzzyWuzzies.

Eagerly discussed over lunch, plans appeared not to have got them much further than the air-side bar at Heathrow Airport, perhaps inviting the termNepalling.

They were in happy mode, anyway.

Two of us started with rocket and wild and field mushroom casserole with garlic and pesto cream and toasted sunflower bread, a third with garden pea, leek and mint soup and dad with a distinctive chicken liver, wild mushroom and brandy pate with cranberry chutney, toasted brioche and herb salad.

Vegetarians may have been interested in a starter of roast beetroot, blood orange, walnut and organic watercress salad with glazed “Ribbersdale” goats’ cheese and honey dressing. Whether they meant Ribblesdale is uncertain, but the emphasis is clearly on local sourcing. Beef is Dexter’s, lamb Fawcett’s, chicken “Driffield” and no matter that a chicken might cross an awful lot of roads in getting from Driffield to Osmotherley.

The Sunday lunch menu also offered bream fillets, maple and orange baked organic ham and baked butternut squash with root vegetables, fennel, chestnut and saffron stuffing and a tomato dressing.

Two chickens, a lamb and a beef were enormously and unequivocally enjoyed. The Yorkshire puddings were the best ever, the meat top quality, the roast potatoes perfect. We might have preferred a little more mash, a few more vegetables between four, but the portions were bigger than the point is.

Puddings, no less enjoyed, included a rhubarb brulee, apricot and almond tart with Yorkshire custard – I meant to ask what was so Yorkshire about the custard – and hazelnut and truffle torte with white chocolate cream.

Bread and butter pudding sadly being unavailable, the little ‘un had a raspberry cheesecake, instead.

Timothy Taylor’s Landlord and something called Frothingham’s were hand-pulled and well kept. The coffee, £2.55, was strong and aromatic. No matter that otherwise admirable service had become a little ragged towards the end, the place had been jumping all afternoon.

The experience was excellent, a proper treat. The Three Tuns is very tempting, indeed.

■ The Three Tuns, Osmotherley, North Yorks.

Tel: 01609-883301. Open seven days from 10am, Sunday lunch noon-6pm. Booking advisable.