Serving up elegant dishes which showcase exceptional local produce, Shaun Rankin at Grantley Hall is a Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.
Having made a name for himself over in Jersey where he championed local ingredients at Bohemia and then Ormer – winning a Michelin star at both – Shaun Rankin now heads up the kitchen at Ripon’s opulent Grantley Hall. While he may have swapped the Channel Islands for the Yorkshire Dales, his ethos certainly hasn’t changed.
Rankin’s restaurant is one of four at the ultra-luxurious Yorkshire hotel but the only one to have been awarded a Michelin star. Grantley Hall’s impressive grounds not only provide a stunning backdrop to meals at the restaurant but also play host to a dedicated kitchen garden, where many of the vegetables and herbs on the menu are grown. Rankin’s love of low-mile ingredients also shines through in his use of organic meats from local farms and sustainably caught seafood from the Yorkshire coast.
The grand dining room is decorated in Wedgwood blue and white, with ornate ceiling decorations, chandeliers and pillars only adding to the unmistakably fine dining nature of the restaurant. The colourful paintings hanging from the walls are lit from above and draw the eye in every direction, while pieces of wooden furniture are dotted about the space for a homely touch.
A ten-course tasting menu, offered only in the evenings, is named ‘A Taste of Home’, referencing both the homely origins of the dishes and the locality of all the ingredients. Dishes such as bread and butter with beef tea and a treacle tart creatively reimagine British comfort food, sitting alongside some more daring combinations like chestnut, chocolate and mushroom. Meanwhile, a reduced six-course Sunday lunch tasting menu gives diners a chance to enjoy Rankin’s food at a more accessible price. A choice of two carefully crafted wine pairing menus are offered for oenophiles, while various digestifs are also offered at the bar.
It would be all too easy to fall into the ‘style-over-substance’ trap when taking over the kitchen at a five-star hotel, but there’s substance by the bucketload at this already award-winning restaurant.
A chef’s table with space for up to eight guests can be booked at the restaurant and comes with a dedicated front-of-house team.
Having opened in 2019, the restaurant won its first Michelin star in the 2021 edition of the guide.
The dining room was formerly a ballroom when the property was still being used as a country house.
Growing up in County Durham, Shaun Rankin knew from early adolescence that he wanted to be a chef. This decision was in part inspired by his experience helping his mother out in the kitchen as a boy, and a number of her cherished recipes – including ham hock soup – were included in his first recipe book, Shaun Rankin’s Seasoned Islands (2010).
Shaun attended catering college in Berkshire before moving to London to gain practical experience, including a period of time working at the five-star May Fair Hotel. He moved to Yorkshire in 1992 to take on position as chef de partie at the Black Bull Inn in Moulton, but before long he was gaining experience all over the world including Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago and Fraser’s in Western Australia.
