Hitchcock’s, Hull: ‘I left stuffed and thoroughly entertained’

The neuroscientist Nobuko Nakano recently published a bestselling book about how lucky people may have “different neurological software”. It’s not that she believes that fate exists, as such, but that serendipity is a direct result of how people behave. I have always considered myself to be a lucky person, but I did wonder what conclusions Nakano would have come to had she spent a couple of days trying to eat in Hull. I was on holiday there with my partner, for reasons best not examined too closely, so I asked ahead for recommendations. The same three places came up. Go for tacos at Food for Cowboys, go for a breakfast muffin at Marla’s, and if you want fancy, go to Hearth, a bakery by day with a restaurant that opens in the evenings. It is the only place in the area that features in the Michelin guide.

Alas, Food for Cowboys was a bust. We arrived on a weeknight, at 6ish, chancing a walk-in, but as we got to the door, a man came out to say they were closed because some of the staff were off sick. “We were fully booked,” he announced, more cheerfully than I would have done, if I’d just lost a night’s takings. “So you wouldn’t have got a table anyway.” We decamped to the pub to come up with a plan B. As we walked through the pretty Old Town, one of the few parts of the city not bombed to bits during the Second World War, I saw a sign for a vegetarian restaurant. Who can resist a drawing of a chef’s hand grasping a big orange carrot that looks like an ice-cream?

Our insider said Hitchcock’s (pictured above) is a Hull institution. They do an all-you-can-eat buffet, for £30 a head, and the theme changes constantly. I went on their Facebook page. On 11 June, it’s Malaysian and Mongolian. On 21 November, Italian and Greek. I phoned to book. They asked if we’d be OK with Nigerian and Vietnamese. What happens in Hull stays in Hull. Instead of tacos, we had everything, everywhere, all at once. The buffet is vast and we soon realised we needed a tactic. One plate for Nigeria, one plate for Vietnam, and never the twain shall meet: an egusi and mock-chicken casserole doesn’t really want to share space with soup-free pho noodles. I did go back for seconds – this is encouraged – of the casserole and for deep-fried akara (bean fritters).

It’s a mad old place, Hitchcock’s, residing in an old forge that had a second life as a nightclub called Bierkeller, before its third incarnation as this brassy little culinary globetrotter. It is full of dark corners and odd rooms, and there are large models of safari animals dotted around the place, some wearing energy-dome hats. I’m not sure Nigeria or Vietnam would necessarily claim all of the night’s spread as their own, but I can say I left stuffed and thoroughly entertained, with an urgent desire to listen to Devo.

The next morning we walked to Marla’s, which opened at 10am. It’s a proper neighbourhood café, friendly and bright, and by 10.05am it was so full that a few punters chose to brave the chill on tables outside. The long-awaited breakfast muffin was not on the menu. It was a Wednesday. They only do it on Sundays, they explained, as a way of keeping the breakfast menu simple before an afternoon of well-regarded roasts. It was no chore to have, instead, a substantial veggie breakfast with homemade beans in a spicy tomato sauce with a hefty depth of flavour, hash brown nuggets and a salsa verde that made me wonder why more breakfasts didn’t come with a drizzle of it. The egg and halloumi sandwich was even better, as the bread was doused in a mindblowing curry-ketchup hybrid. They make it in-house and normally they sell it in jars. That day, they had sold out.

Still, there was always Hearth. We were staying a 10-minute walk away, and it was supposed to be a dry evening, but as soon as we stepped out of the door a freak hailstorm forced us to hide in a bus stop while I panic-ordered a taxi. Danny, the driver, raved about Hearth, his wife’s favourite restaurant. The fried chicken was great, he said, but warned that it was a bit pricey. There was an ambulance outside when we got there. Nothing to do with them, the staff assured us.

You walk up carpeted stairs into an understated room where you’ll be greeted by a hard-to-overstate vista of Hull Minster, which twinkles prettily. Hearth offers a small plates/large plates menu, with elements of most dishes cooked over fire. We were told we could either order a selection to come at once, or do it as starters and mains. We asked for it all to come when it was ready. It came as starters and mains. The small plates were excellent and fairly priced. A bowl of chunky gnudi, ricotta dumplings, with asparagus, wild garlic and a silky miso sauce, was rich and soothing, in a chicken-soup-for-the-soul way. A single fat duck kofte sat on aubergine yoghurt with candied walnuts, and it was tender and smoky and not too dry, as minced duck can be. There was a great hulking slab of chicken, so big it almost spilled off the edge of the plate. It was salty, sweet and crisp, on a bed of creamy sesame sauce, giving KFC by way of prawn toast. Danny was not wrong. It was great.

The large plates were less sure of themselves, though they were priced with the bare-faced swagger of Liam Gallagher in the 1990s. The halibut was classy, tender and the skin immaculately crisped, but it was perched on oyster mushrooms, grilled cabbage and lightly pickled onions, and the char was washed away by a mushroomy sauce. It went well with a bowl of roast potatoes cosplaying as mini jacket spuds. A vegetarian main is usually a good measure of a kitchen’s state of mind, however, and I had to check the receipt to see if I really had paid £28 for a charred sweet potato on a tahini emulsion, with an aggressively large fistful of sumac-dressed parsley on top. I know running costs are high. Even so, by the next morning, I was miffed. But then I remembered the pudding. Hearth is a bakery, after all. Their warm malt treacle tart tasted like a Malteser wrestling with a sticky toffee pudding on biscuity pastry. It was enough to make me think, just for a second, that my luck had finally turned.

Hitchcock’s, 1 Bishop Lane, Hull HU1 1PA (01482 320233). £30 buffet, booking essential

Marla’s, 53 Princes Avenue, Hull HU5 3QY (@we.are.marlas). Sandwiches from £8.25

Hearth, 10.5 King Street, Hull HU1 2JJ (hearthfamily.co.uk). Small plates from £12.50, large plates from £28, desserts from £9