How Hearth restaurant in Hull is ticking all the the right boxes despite difficult times

Restaurateurs, chefs, waiting staff and all concerned are giving it everything they’ve got against impossible circumstance.

The pandemic turned people off going out, Brexit made it harder to find or afford ingredients and staff and how they can be expected to run the ovens and heating with gas bills doubling every five minutes and zero government help is beyond me.

This must be the most frustrating time to own or run a restaurant since the end of rationing.

How reassuring and encouraging it is, then, to find a new restaurant that’s absolutely rollicking along.

Hearth opened a couple of months back in the picture-perfect surrounds of Trinity Square, dead opposite the Minster and next to Prince Street, which is the gently curving row of pastel-coloured Georgian houses that always appears on the cover of Visit Hull pamphlets.

It used to be Studio 10½, for those who prefer to navigate via memory.

During the day, Hearth is a bakery, serving fresh baked bread and pastries and light lunch options. But we shall concentrate on the evening, where we find a menu of small plates, large plates, snacks and sides that you’d struggle to criticise, unless you have some sort of weird aversion to fabulous food.

Once parked at the table that overlooks Prince Street, we start trying to decide who’s having what so we can best sample the widest range of dishes.

Every decision made creates a new heartache of the dishes unselected. To avoid a running order squabble fest, we ask for it all to arrive whenever the chef likes. We tuck our napkins under our chins, prime our cutlery, charge our glasses and rev our motors. Menu-inspired anticipation is very high.

First came crispy chicken skin (like pork scratchings, but chicken, what’s not to love?), crispy devilled eggs (eggs, devilled and deep fried, amazing) and oxtail and vintage cheddar nuggets. These were my favourite. Little bread-coated patties served with a mustardy/mayo-y dip. Less wise heads may have chosen a fancier cheese to match with the oxtail, but I can imagine a few cries of ‘but that just works’ going up in the kitchen as they decided no further search was needed on the fromage front.

Each of these snacks would steal the entire menu in your average gastro pub. As would the ones we didn’t select.

Of the small plates (like a snack, but on a bigger plate), we tried beer battered cod cheeks with tartare sauce - which was a perfectly good plateful, just comparatively unadventurous – and southern fried lamb sweetbread with buttermilk ranch, which I avoided on account of my shyness of offal, but which elicited lip smacks and enthusiastic thumbs up from the other side of the table.

If I’m honest, I was already feeling a little full when the large plates arrived.

One look at them though and my stomach did all it could to convince me it had loads of room left. Bavette steak with roast shallots had a dollop of herb butter melting all over it. You should have seen it. Honestly. You’d have torn into it just as savagely as we did. I promise.

Equally perfectly-cooked and delivered was the pork chop with greengage salsa. We had both mains with a side of cracked potatoes (little pots, squashed so they go super crispy when fried) to mop up the juices and provide something to dip into the beef fat aioli. Yes, beef fat aioli. That’s aioli made with beef fat instead of olive oil. We were eating the equivalent of fat chips and hot dripping and we loved it.

By this point, obviously, my heart was yelling at my stomach to tell my brain it was surrendering. Comms must have been down, though, because we immediately ordered and destroyed a lovely coconut panna cotta and a beautiful fig frangipan tart with clotted cream. My poor heart has subsequently sent a formal letter of complaint.

Hearth marks the assemblage of the talents of chef Ryan Telford, front of house (and manager) Ian Pexton and head baker Caitlin Ogden. Their joint experience ranges from Michelin-starred places in London, to classical French training to running country pubs throughout the Wolds.

Each brings their own estimable skills to this, their first time in charge, individually or as a group. I’ve only encountered Ian before and know a little of his work history. He has taken the best bits of the other places he's worked in and put that knowledge into Hearth.

Looking at the results, I’m assuming the others have done exactly the same.

What they’ve collectively created is a solid, exciting, enticing and friendly restaurant that’s bucking the current trend and delivering on all levels, despite the hospitality world basically being an ongoing skip fire.

Hearth is already busy most nights, but I confidently predict that by Christmas, they’ll be running a waiting list. Word-of-mouth is red-hot and now some idiot has only gone and put them in the paper.

I’d get in quick, if I was you.

Hearth,10½ King Street, Hull, HU1 2JJ; Tel – 01482 429203; www.hearthfamily.co.uk; Open – Thurs, Fri & Sat – 6pm to 9.30pm, Sun 12noon to 3.30pm.