The Talbot hotel: restaurant review

Horses for courses: the dining 'flame' at Hotel Talbot in Malton, North Yorkshire. Photo: Gary Calton for the observer

Yorkersgate, Malton, North Yorkshire (01653 639 096). Meal for two, wine and service included: ￡110

I am studying a plate of food more intensely than usual. For the most part, I am working on what the hell to do about it. I must look bizarre, only here in a dining crowded Hotel Friday evening, heads bowed as if, as a sign of supplication. I take very seriously this dish. I'm not wrong to draw up an opinion. I know exactly what I think: it is the best single food I was served so far this year.

The question is, can I afford? There are circumstances at stake here and in the age of social media, you have to be alive for the occasion. In my opinion, lying. I'll just ask it was a normal examination, that I turned up unannounced and does the thing: ordered the second cheapest bottle of wine on the list and avoided the pork belly dish even if I wanted to. But someone would be me rumble. The Talbot hotel in Malton? Hang in there, you do a few events at the Malton Food Festival? Surely the room was comped or even dinner, too? They know you are coming.

Well Yes. Quite true. And again: the best single food I was served this year? I need to talk to you about this, I do? It's my job. Of course, it is also the name of the leader at the top of the menu to consider. When, last year, I have bigged up by James Martin cooking in a bizarre Leeds casino - since closed people blew raspberries at me. They didn't like saying me nice things about this guy off the TV with the tone of Saturday-morning quiz game sparkles. Later, when he came out of the kitchen, she would sweat which has not only been Martin wrote a menu cracking here, too - it was also cooking it, had been all week.

So finally, a decision: I'll pay for dinner, explain the situation and then you can choose to ignore this review or not. Your call. The Talbot is a little OAF Pierre York in a solid York-Pierre market town, not far from the estate of Castle Howard, where Martin's father worked and he grew up. The dining room is a shady rectangular space, walls hung with portraits of dull sportsmen of puzzled - looking for old NAGs. Any light on this Friday night comes the other guests, who are from this crowd of robust wealthy Yorkshire who do not mind to pay so much in value. Two courses ￡33, three are ￡39.

The menu makes a lot of local name dropping: asparagus is in the Vale of York. Plaice and halibut is on the north side; beef is braised in a local beer that I've never heard of, the names of beer is not a strong point of mine. I start with a disk of salmon cured in the gardens of the hotel, which has this soft but fleshy texture ideal, as he wants you to eat. There is the fist of pickled ginger, the crunchiness of the charred cucumber, the power that only a spring onion, refusing to watch his manners, can give you. Unlike me, he is extraordinarily well balanced.

Best dish of the year: Braised beef. Photo: Gary Calton for the observer

And then this year best dish so far: an ox size Yorkshire plays - as long as my hand - braised for 12 hours in this beer Riggwelter, so that it falls apart on the fork rather than on the plate. It lies on a Pearl, barley risotto spun through with a wild garlic puree the color of the comedy of a parade of St. Patrick, alongside Spears roasted Salsify. Around it are effective modernist touch: Sweet Onion layers holding the cubes in a warm beer jelly and sprinkled with a powder base of dried onions and blitzed. It is that rare thing: skill and technical manifesto which also speaks of the gourmet side of you. Or at least to me.

I finished as I did at Leeds, with its butter croissant chocolate and white whisky pudding. It is this perfect mix of crunchy and flaky layers of French pastry, and in its midst, a collapse shamelessly, Pasty, soft. There you have it: three beautifully, ready near the blameless dishes, paid and eaten. If, given the circumstances, you are ready to take my word for it, is entirely to you.

Jay an e-mail to jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1

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