The Durham Ox Review

Situated in the historic village of Crayke in North Yorkshire, The Durham Ox is a three-hundred year old pub which has been under the same ownership for over two decades. Having successfully retained a Michelin Guide listing for many years, I was (as always) hopeful of receiving some good quality pub cooking, as I rocked up for lunch with my wife and two children, on a mild February Saturday.

There's a nice large car park behind the pub (always handy) and it's a good job, because as well as the main pub, there's quite a lot going on here. There are eight bedrooms, a large barn-like events space and even an outdoor bar area (sort of like a massive garden shed) which was showing the rugby during our visit.

The welcome on arrival was perfectly warm, and we were shown to our table in one of the dining areas. I liked the space; it has a slightly tired traditional pub feel but is perfectly comfortable. What I didn't like was the large speaker right above our table, pumping out a slightly bizarre playlist mix at an unnecessarily high volume. There were only a couple of other tables for lunch during our visit, so I guess they might have been trying to inject some atmosphere.

On offer at lunch is a three course carte menu and we were also given a set lunch menu, but informed most of that is not available for Saturday lunch (I think just the sandwich selection is) which was mildly confusing. Although there's a children's menu listed on their website, we weren't offered one at any point during the meal, so I'm not sure in all honesty if that is still available or has been phased out.

There are also a large number of specials listed on blackboards around the dining area. Drinks wise, there's a sizeable drinks list with a wide range of options, including a lengthy selection of cocktails. On this occasion we all just stuck with soft drinks.

Lunch began for me with the enticingly named 'sticky spicy belly pork'. The 'Asian salad' on top of the meat was pretty uninspired, but the meat itself was delightfully tender and very flavoursome, I enjoyed this dish a lot. My wife went for the ham hock terrine with piccalilli which she enjoyed, albeit not as much as I enjoyed my starter.

For the kids, we ordered a 'bread basket' each. We received one bread basket with two plates, and only two pieces of bread each which felt incredibly tight to be honest for the £12 total we were charged. I feel like this may have actually been just one bread portion but they just charged us for two regardless (I do look like a soft touch), but who knows. The bread was nice enough though.

For mains, I went for the duo of prime Yorkshire beef, served with braised bone marrow, dauphinoise potatoes and a beef and madeira jus. This was a fairly uncomplicated but tasty dish; the beef fillet was cooked a bit more than the medium-rare I asked for, but was still a very fine chunk of meat, and the accompanying elements were all enjoyable also.

My wife opted for the slow cooked confit duck leg, served with lyonnaise potatoes, seasonal greens and a thyme and red wine reduction. It was another solidly cooked and tasty main course. My daughter had the bacon and cheeseburger which was decent, albeit not the best burger she's ever had, whilst my young son was happy enough with his side of fries.

After some enjoyable savoury courses, we were happy to give desserts a try, but these sadly were not as strong as what had gone before. The first really noticeable thing is that although we ordered some quite varied desserts, they all arrived in exactly the same thick glass stemmed bowl, it sort of felt a bit seaside-cafe-ish to be honest.

My lemon posset with summer berries compote and white chocolate was tasty enough, but there was way too much compote versus the amount of posset served, it's like they reversed the intended ratios when serving it to me. My wife had the coconut and mango sundae which was fine but fairly basic, whilst the kids enjoyed some vanilla ice cream and mango sorbet respectively.

There are a wide range of different ice cream flavours here and nearly every dessert features ice cream, but unfortunately none of the ice creams are made on site which is absolutely normal for bog standard pub grub, but not what I'd hope for from an award winning restaurant in this day and age.

And that as they say was pretty much that; after collecting our bill (complete with 10% service charge) our lunch came to an end. Overall we did enjoy our visit here but the food as a whole wasn't as good as I'd been hoping for. The savoury courses were strong and several levels up from bog standard pub grub for sure, but the desserts were just filler, and I felt the prices charged given the level of cooking here were pretty punchy.

I see this a lot with larger venues offering multiple different services and dining areas; there's a lot going on and in the quest to satisfy everyone, the quality of what's coming out of the kitchen takes a back seat. The service was absolutely fine and I've certainly had far worse food in the past, but all things considered, this isn't a place I'm likely to venture back to anytime soon.