In the early hours of June 9, a devastating fire swept through a small restaurant called the Joyful Deli, which is near a small village in the Yorkshire Dales called Addingham.
I’m incredibly sad for the folk who own it and, until last night, lived in it; for those who run it and work in it; and for customers who used to eat there, lovingly. But that’s not why you’re reading about the place.
You’re reading about the Joyful Deli because it was about to be added to the Standard’s list of restaurants worth travelling for. Photos were taken, copy was filed, and now… Well, now there’s nothing to travel to. Which is – you’ll have to trust me on this for now – a genuine tragedy.
I was going to write about how the Joyful Deli had taken me, gloriously, by surprise.
There are some restaurants I walk into confident that I’m going to write about them. Whether because of a recommendation, or that glorious intangible they call “buzz”, I walk through the door expecting a gastronomic experience. My phone is poised for pics and notes and I’m already playing with opening lines, looking for narrative threads, and all that other technical stuff that is very much my problem not yours. In some ways, that makes the job easier.
The Joyful Deli wasn’t like that. It was one of those special places where the feeling starts to creep up on you that this might not be just another place to go for a bite to eat. That you might be dealing with a chef who knows their way round Mediterranean veg. That you might, in fact, be sitting in a restaurant worth travelling to. For the Joyful Deli, it was the breakfast that did it.
Where Giles Coren refuses to go to pubs for a Sunday roast because it won’t be as good as it would be at his gaff, I have pretty strong feelings on restaurant breakfasts because I am bloody good at cooking a full English. I know where my bacon’s from. I know what’s in my sausages. I, when it comes to the hash brown, quite literally know my onions.
It turned out the kitchen at the Joyful Deli did, too. Crisp but yielding black pudding (begone, you naysayers of the pudding, you’re not welcome here); tomatoes beautifully seasoned and actually cooked to a gooey mess, not just melancholy, after a brief trip to the grill; bacon that was thick, but not gammon-thick, with perfectly crisped fat; sausages that grew up in the field next door and were all the better for it; eggs that landed onto hay that morning; and, yes, a ramekin of beans, which I know isn’t everyone’s preferred method of bean-delivery, but I like it. It’s good for dipping the toast (which was also excellent).
My first visit to the Joyful Deli was, in the best way possible, not what I was expecting. And so, because I’m a dedicated professional, I went back, this time for lunch. It was fabulous too: a simple menu – but I’m a simple guy – and sometimes simple menus are exactly what you need. I had a chicken breast with new potatoes and roast veg, which might sound a little like the sort of thing a particularly adventurous student might knock up if they were showing off, but was absolutely divine; moist, plump chicken, with crisp, shattering skin, and a cocktail of veggie tastes and flavours that lifted you right out of Yorkshire and deposited you somewhere on the Ligurian coast. Lemon cut through like a coastal breeze.
My partner enjoyed a courgette and feta frittata, which took her off to the Aegean, which could have been frustrating, but fortunately it was just a forced metaphor. And then, partly because we’re gluttons, but also because I firmly believe you can tell a lot about a restaurant by its chips, we had some chips, and the chips were excellent. And, again, I know my chips.
The kitchen also did amazing pizzas, and the deli part of the name served some of the most spectacular pork pies, quiches, millionaire’s shortbread and carrot cake you’ll find on a roadside in Yorkshire.
All that was, in part, thanks to Jilly, the founder and co-owner, a geyser of enthusiasm and passion and positivity. It showed in everything we ate and everything we bought to eat later. She’s a force of nature who turned “offering cups of tea to hikers” into a thriving restaurant, employing thirteen people. She’s also the wizard that found the brilliant young chef, Rosie Bell.
When Rosie’s not cooking at the Deli, she runs a successful private chef business (which includes cooking for a number of Leeds United footballers, but we can’t hold that against her): now, of course, she’s not going to be cooking at the place for the foreseeable, which is a great, great shame, because what she was cooking was simple, it was comforting, and it was elevated without getting all up in your face about its elevation. Nobody likes an uppity chicken breast.
And the thing was, the most important, quite flabbergasting thing, was that the Joyful Deli absolutely didn’t need to be tremendous at all. It was beautiful: a converted barn, with forks stuck in the gaps between the stones to hold the fairy lights, a lovely post-pandemic back-story, and a gorgeous new area out the back overlooking the Dales. It was a captivating venue in an entrancing spot. It was providing jobs where previously there were none. And, in this neck of the woods, bikes and hikes will always bring people to the door. The Joyful Deli could have got away with being fine. Fine would have done the job. But it was so much more than that.
I was going to finish by telling you that you can find it in that most Yorkshire of spots, tucked away within the wildness of the moors. Except, of course, you won’t find it there anymore. Instead, you’ll find a burnt out barn, a whole lot of sadness, and a community that’s already gathering round.
For now, at least. The same irrepressible energy that lead owners Jilly and Mike to grow this slice of culinary and gastronomic delight out of a global pandemic is already kicking in and you can rest assured they will be back. They’ve launched a GoFundMe and are drawing up plans to get going again quite literally before the smoke has even cleared.
Should you wish to, you can donate to the GoFundMe, help Jilly, Mike and the team get back on their feet; or just follow them on Instagram and mark the Joyful Deli down as a restaurant absolutely worth travelling to. Just not for a bit. But I promise it’s worth waiting for.
The Joyful Deli, Ilkley Road, Addingham, Ilkley, LS29 0RR, @the_joyful_deli
