Root Holmfirth restaurant review: 'Honest, wholesome food' in great cafe

One of my favourite reviewers, Chitra Ramaswamy, who writes about places to eat in Scotland for The Times filed a glowing piece about a French deli and licensed café in Newhaven just outside Edinburgh, saying ‘La Cîme is the latest neighbourhood gem proving that the local café is the new restaurant’.

Caffs have come a long way since the greasy spoon, although there’s nothing wrong with those either; there are times when only a bacon and fried egg bap will do. Add chips if you’re hung over, plus a pint mug of builder’s tea. Hello Grindleford Station Café.

I’m with Chitra. Some of my best eats have been in low-key, modest places rather than Michelin starred spots (though I am very much making an exception for the Sportsman at Seasalter on the Kent coast, where my fellow reviewer and chum Jill Turton and I finally went after months – nay years – of talking about it. It’s every bit as good as everyone (including the Tire Man) says it is. We’re already planning our next trip.)

Ginkgo in Harrogate knocked me out, and it’s very much a café, open between 9am and 3pm – I implore you to make your way there if you haven’t been.

It really is exceptional: good ingredients made into imaginative dishes you might not make at home – think Teriyaki pork belly on toasted skokupan, sesame fried eggs, crispy chilli, Japanese cabbage slaw.

I’m a huge fan of the Tea Rooms at Lockton too; my fave is Turkish eggs (with lemon garlic yoghurt, chive oil, Aleppo pepper butter, avocado, basil & dukkah) and they do a stonking Reuben toastie. The coffee’s exceptional too.

All of which brings me to Root. It’s a café and also a place where you can do Pilates and yoga. If this sounds a bit, well, worthy – it sort of is, but the offer is a long way from the Cranks nut roast circa 1970. The location is a repurposed mill on a busy main road, but once you’ve climbed the outside steps to the first floor, the café is peaceful, and bathed in sunshine – it’s a very agreeable small but stylish lofty space.

There are good things for breakfast: poached eggs, crispy prosciutto, garlic mushrooms, gravlax, Greek strained yoghurt with berry compote, house granola and ‘Breakfast Sourdough’ (‘Our nod to the classic BLT. Prosciutto, rocket, sliced vine tomato and mayo’).

Moving on to lunch – it was hard to choose, I can tell you. In the end we over-ordered, and took home enough for tea. Open sandwiches include olive tapenade, artichoke heart, cherry tomatoes, spinach & balsamic vinegar. There’s a bunch of grilled sarnies along the lines of pastrami, Emmental & pickle, and beef brisket pastrami, nutty Emmental cheese and dill pickles served with mustard mayo, and half a dozen flatbread ‘pizzas’; we shared prosciutto, mozzarella & pickled onion – a great way to start, really delicious.

There are four salads - Izgara chicken (sort of Turkish, marinated in yogurt and spices) with crispy chickpeas and roast pepper sounds good yeah? But we went Moroccan: Beluga lentils, apricots, almonds, tomato, red pepper, cucumber, red onion and coriander, dressed with harissa and served with a garlic flatbread - it’s a riot of colour and flavour.

From a section on the menu called ‘BIGGER’ the Merguez sausage dish jumped off the page and it’s as good a saus as I’ve had (they have it made at the local butchers to a secret recipe). Served with cheddar and onion hash browns, poached egg & harissa, it’s a taste and texture bomb, the hash browns beautifully crisp, earthy lentils with a kick of heat and a perfect poached egg pooling over it all. Elsewhere on ‘BIGGER’ is Spanakopita which I watched land on the next table and had Greek pie envy.

In the kitchen (I say kitchen, it’s a postage-stamp-sized corner behind the counter and yes I did have to ask twice if all this lovely food comes from there) is a young lass who waits on too. Hello Harriet. It turns out she’s from a foodie family – her dad Darren Milner is the executive chef at the Dunkirk which I raved about a month or so ago. The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree, has it?

Root runs a supper club too, called rather whimsically ‘get what you’re given’ which I really like the idea of: what’s in season, a number of small dishes, no choice, £50 a head on Friday evenings starting in September. I’m a recent convert to the concept of asking the kitchen to choose for me: sometimes it’s a faff working out what you’d like to eat, and the chef gets to give you what they consider their best dishes. Try it, it really does work.

Just when I thought I’d done, the Gravlax Salmon sandwich caught my eye: house cured, the fish is sweetly fragrant, and it sits on fabulous whipped feta with dill, pickled onion and wholegrain mustard. As it’s the size of a small pillow half of it comes home with me. There are good drinks here too: the smoothies look amazing, the coffee is Dark Woods (it’s the best, I’m taking no questions at this time) and Root is licensed, so there’s Cloudwater Craft Beer from Manchester and a small handful of decent wines, and prosecco.

These are really good dishes, made with care and respect for ingredients, and not monkeyed around with; honest, wholesome food made by folk who have an instinct to feed you well. Hooray for the café.

Ratings:

Welcome – 5/5

Food – 4/5

Atmosphere – 5/5

Prices – 5/5

Root café Unit 2 Sude Hill, New Mill, Holmfirth HD97LB www.rootpilates.com open every day 10 – 3. Large lunch for two with two coffees £56.50