Sir Dukes, Wetherby

Oh when will it all end?!  The inexorable march of the "Dude Food" revolution.  It seems that every new restaurant that opens is another incarnation of the burger/barbecue theme and even I, as a self-confessed lover of meat, cheese and bread, am beginning to struggle to muster enthusiasm.  Recently I visited The Pit, the much-hyped barbecue joint in Harrogate and realised that, essentially, it was no better than Beer and Burger around the corner, except that it was 3 times as expensive and offered less variety.  Nevertheless, Sir Dukes had been on my radar for some time, not least because up until January it offered a burger topped with a pork-pie which sounded ludicrously brilliant.

So it was this Bank Holiday Monday that myself, my better half and some friends who were already familiar with Sir Dukes found ourselves tottering down a narrow Wetherby street in the warm evening light of the early Summer sun.

Sir Dukes was, once upon a time, a pleasant little tea room, more naturally suited to these Yorkshire Stone streets, and this quaint, little cottage was not what I was expecting.  None of the red leather, neon and wide-screen sports of The Pit, but a tiny, low-ceilinged affair, walls adorned with interesting art and still imbued with the essence of its former life.  There is a small bar with no draft beers but an impressive selection of bottled ales from local suppliers (note: The Great Yorkshire Brewery’s “Red Lager” is a must) and a highly enthusiastic barman who performs elaborate, ninja-like flips as he pops the caps off bottles.  There's also a good selection of milkshakes and cocktails which border on lethal.  Our table was in one of the many little crannies which make up the interior and I had to perform some nifty contortions to cram my 6'4" bulk into place.  Our waiter (who, we later discovered was also the owner) was a Jason Orange lookalike from Middlesborough, soldiering on despite the pain of losing out to Norwich in the Championship playoffs, and he explained the "concept" of the restaurant; they had purchased an uber-cool grill from Germany and sourced meat from an expert supplier who also stocks the larders of the higher end of London's fine dining scene.  Earlier in the week I'd been to Chiquitos, they also like to explain their concept which is basically "we do shit loads of Tex-Mex stuff, cheap". At Sir Dukes their concept was something worth shouting about.

For a starter we shared a platter between the four of us, a beautiful selection of charcuterie including delicate prosciutto, peppery salami and the best mozzarella I’ve ever tasted.  TV chefs wax lyrical about mozzarella but even the pricier stuff I’d tried before was little more than a salty rubber ball, this, however, was delicate, milky, almost panna-cotta like in texture, light and clean tasting.  There was also a fennel and dill salad which was bold and reminded you that this place wasn’t about cute, fluffy, cheeses, it was about dirty great slabs of meat.

Speaking of which…

I ordered the “For Heaven’s Steak” combo: a “stay classy burger” (two burgers, lettuce, burger sauce, tomato, black pepper ketchup and cheese), an 8oz rump steak topped with caramelised onions and cheese, fries and coleslaw.  Yes, burger and chips with a side of steak, whoever thought of using a steak as a side dish, take a bow.  I’ll cut right to the chase: this is the best burger I’ve ever had.  And let’s not look down our nose at burgers, this wasn’t good “for a burger”, it was beautiful thing in its own right.  The beefiest beef that beef could be, full of flavour and perfectly cooked.  The sauces and the cheese were superb, everything designed to complement and showcase those carefully sourced key ingredients.  The steak was also incredible, though hidden under those onions and strong cheese the flavour was overwhelmed, but moving them to the side gave the meat chance to shine, melt-in-the-mouth, juicier than I’ve ever know steak to be and charred to the perfect medium I’d requested.  Even the coleslaw, so often a bland, pointless garnish, was packed with fiery wholegrain mustard which was a perfect foil to all that protein.  And don’t think that those chips were an afterthought either, rather than the fries you would expect, these were dark, smokey and meaty in their own right (I suspect cooked in beef dripping), these were very British chips to go with a very British Burger.

Meat.

My other half also opted for a combo, the “Pig in Banquet”: pulled pork sandwich, Spanish Sausage, baby back ribs and bacon fries.  She was as enthusiastic as I was, and even though I was suffering the effects of early-onset meat blindness I still managed to steal one of her bacon fries, topped with a bright pink, cheesy, smokey sauce which was just incredible.  Our fellow diners opted for a Duck Hanger, and elaborate cast iron torture device supporting an impaled half duck, over a dish of rice, catching all of the ducky juices.  Above the duck was a small bowl into which she poured a hoi sin sauce which then dropped onto the duck before running off onto the rice, not a drop of juice was wasted and she reported this to be the best duck she had ever had.  The final member of our party went for a rump steak cooked rare-blue.  A few months ago I went for a steak at Miller and Carter wherein I requested a rump steak cooked rare, at the time my waiter advised me that rump needed to be cooked longer as it had a thicker vein of fat which needed the extra time to render down.  It is, of course, possible that he was simply trying to upsell me to a more expensive cut, however it takes a confident waiter to tell you that what you’re ordering is wrong.  There was no such objection here so I was interested to see the outcome. As it was the steak arrived looking like it had been shown a hot frying pan and then run away mooing in fear, it was ruby red but not oozing blood and, by all accounts, of the same high standard as the rest of the meal.

We couldn’t do desserts and didn’t even look.

In a market which is seemingly saturated by establishments trying to jump on the American Food bandwagon, Sir Dukes offers something different: a British twist.  Of course, the US influence is there but they have done what all good restaurants do: taken the concept, stripped it down to its bare bones then rebuilt it in their own vision.  It’s easy to be sniffy about burger and steak restaurants, but to dismiss Sir Dukes as such would be a grave injustice, this is top quality food cooked by people who genuinely care about what they’re doing, and long may it continue, because this place is an absolute gem.