Roots: York has a new star attraction – restaurant review | Grace Dent

The posterboy for British hospitality has another surefire hit on his hands

For many children of the 80s, the city of York is synonymous with one attraction only: the Jorvik Viking Centre, a place where history came alive and where, after the bunfight queues to get in, one could trundle in a cart through staged scenes of ye olde animatronic Jorvik chick-keepers. Some of us knew it just from Blue Peter, but others dared to dream and visited on school trips.

My main memory is that the Jorvik piped in fake authentic dung smells, which, for a coachload of kids from Cumbria, was something of a busman’s holiday. But I am here to announce that York now has a fresh star attraction, one that’s also steeped in history. Roots was formerly The Bay Horse, a gargantuan boozer dating from 1893, which has been tastefully renovated in muted shades by chef Tommy Banks and the family-centric team behind The Black Swan at Oldstead. The Banks family’s first project is famed for being TripAdvisor’s “best restaurant in the world”, a rare example of TripAdvisor churning out the merest nod towards common sense.