Mason’s Bistro Bar
Restaurant: Mason’s Bistro Bar
Address: 13 Fossgate
Prices: Main £15, Lunchtime two course £9.50
Rating: ***
If you need to commemorate the end of exams and feel you deserve a touch more class then a night of debauchery in Ziggy’s and a Yummy Chicken to celebrate, then Mason’s Mediterranean bistro is for you. Be prepared to blow the rest of your student loan and gulp cheap ‘Vodkat’ from a flask for the last few weeks of university life in the process, but the experience will be a night to remember, unlike most of the ones in Tru which are best left forgotten.
Main meals start from £15.95 but a choice of orgasm-inducing dishes from North Africa to France seduced me into selecting the roasted quail with pan juices and a rosewater jelly and sauté chicken livers to start – I felt that if I was going to be able to appreciate the internal organs of a butchered animal anywhere, here would be a good place to give it a try. Had I been in less of an offal-centric mood choices included a tempting sounding steak with black truffle butter. Vegetarian diners were not ignored, being offered a classic bouillabaise, or stuffed aubergine for the truly converted. An enquiry into the wine list reduced me to selecting the cheapest house white available for £13.50, but the promise of an overt bouquet with a ‘gooseberry pungency’ made my unhappy liver give a sigh of relief. For social climbers a bottle of ‘Pol Roger White Foil champagne’ is available for a mere £42.50. Chin chin.
As the drinks flowed and the conversation became evermore loud and less intelligent our table of student rabble began to feel increasingly out of place in the cool, old-fashioned ambience of Mason’s. Formerly the home of a high quality grocer of the same name, the restaurant has maintained its traditional charm complete with original wooden features, which no doubt make its usual clientele of the elderly rich feel comparatively more youthful. Unable to remember ‘the good old days’ I was instead impressed by the grace and character of the restaurant-cum-museum complete with its fascinating collection of ‘living fossil’ diners, indeed more than our money’s worth.
The starters arrived and looked delightful, and despite the complimentary noises that my friends were making in the midst of consumption, one mouthful of my chicken liver reminded me that offal is offal, not matter how expensive or well dressed. Though no doubt the best prepared in York, I couldn’t help thinking it would have been better appreciated packaged in a pouch of Whisker’s finest cat food and fed to a lonely spinster’s overweight cat.
Ravenously hungry I keenly awaited the mains and was justly rewarded. The quail was beautifully succulent and though swimming in a soup of juices rather than flying in a summer sky, my conscience was somewhat eased upon realisation of the fact that unlike the chicken, this little bird hadn’t died in vain.
Desserts were expensive but delicious, yet I have a small suspicion that they are shipped in rather than hand crafted. At the stage of the night however, I was thoroughly inebriated enough to devour both my own and scrape the bowls of my friends. As a food reviewer you get the privilege of ‘trying’ a bit of everyone’s in the name of research and upon this night I used that carte blanche to the maximum. If that’s not a reflection of the quality of the food, I don’t know what is.
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