You’ll be able to drink and dine from early till late at two new restaurants coming to York city centre.
The Lord Mayor has Jamie on one side and is will soon have Joe on the other, as restaurant chain Joe’s Kitchen sets its sights on Coney Street.
Situated in the former Café Rouge building next to the Mansion House – and just two doors down from Jamie’s Italian – the “casual, down-to-earth” restaurant inspired by London’s Borough Market is due to open soon.
The Joe’s Kitchen chain is run by The Restaurant Group, owner of more than 500 ‘casual dining’ restaurants and pubs in the UK, with plans to double its portfolio in the next decade.
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It serves more than 43 million meals a year through brands like Frankie & Benny’s, Chiquito, Coast to Coast, Garfunkel’s, Brunning & Price and Joe’s Kitchen.
The group has applied to City of York Council for a licence to operate Joe’s Kitchen on Coney Street from Monday to Sunday from 8am to 12.30am, with alcohol sales running from 10am to midnight.
According to its job adverts, Joe’s Kitchen is an “all-day restaurant that will be mixing things up from early morning breakfast to late night candlelit dinners”.
Breakfast butties and sirloin steaks
Joe’s Kitchen brands itself as “no fuss; nothing fancy”, adding, as part of its laid-back mission statement:
We offer great tasting food, cooked by people who care, and served just how you like it.
The nearest Joe’s Kitchen outlets to York are currently at Manchester Airport and Nottingham’s Victoria Centre.
The Nottingham branch, which opened in November last year, is currently rated 929th out of 1,133 restaurants in the city on TripAdvisor, with 41 reviews giving an average three-star rating.
So, what can we expect Joe to cook up for us here in York? If the Nottingham menu is anything to go by, we’re in for breakfast from £4.65 (sausage buttie) to £8.95 (Joe’s Café Breakfast – two sausages, two bacon rashers, two eggs, hash brown, tomato, mushroom and toast).
Lunch and dinner starters from £4.95 (soup and baguette) to £6.95 (lime and red chili calamari) and mains from £9.50 (ham hock cakes) to £16.95 (sirloin steak).
And if you’ve got room for a pud, £4.50 (ice cream) to £5.45 (pecan pie).
Cosying up on Fossgate
Meanwhile on Fossgate, plans are progressing to turn the street’s most instantly recognisable building into a restaurant.
Loungers Ltd, a Bristol-based café-bar chain, have applied to York council for a licence for the former Macdonalds Furniture store.
They have already received planning permission to turn the former cinema into a restaurant, with four new homes to be built behind it.
The company plan to open one of its “quirky, eccentric and playful” Cosy Club restaurants inside the 1911 York building. There are already 13 open across the country in cities like Bath, Manchester, Cardiff and Leicester.
Its website says…
Think gents club meets village hall meets cricket pavilion.
The group has applied to open its Fossgate branch from 8am daily, closing at midnight on Sunday-Wednesday, with a 12.30am finish on Thursday to Saturday. Alcohol would be served from 10am to half an hour before closing time.
From the Manchester Cosy Club menu: cooked breakfast £8.25, fish finger sandwich £8.95, crab linguine £13.95 and 8oz 28 day-aged black angus sirloin steak £14.95.
Puds include salted caramel cheesecake for £5.50, and for drinks you could try lemonade for £2.80, a piña colada for £7.50, a 175ml glass of wine for £4.10 and a draught pint of Stella for £3.60.