Lunching at the Pavement Vaults | York

Since leaving Manchester a lot of our friends have moved away as well. This means a lot of our weekends are now spent heading to various cities across the country to visit friends. Recently a very good friend of ours moved to York and we visited just before Christmas, immediately falling in love with the place. We’ve since visited again and have a wealth of places we like to visit in the city for food and drink.

One of these places is Pavement Vaults. This pub not only has an extensive beer and gin menu (woop woop), but it has a great BBQ restaurant attached to it. When you enter the pub the smell of the food hits you and I bet you that if you visit you can’t resist staying for the food either! Just a heads up though, weekends in York are mega busy, if there’s lots of you booking a table might be the way forward for your Pavement Vaults visit. I should point out that I did not eat all of these items off the menu, some nice friends of mine let me take pictures (and ask them about their food!)

BBQ Beast

This beast of a tray has a St. Louis Pork Rib Cut, Buttermilk Fried Spiced Chicken, 2 Triple Fried Wings and 18 hour BBQ Pulled Pork on it. With all of the Pitmaster Trays you get to pick the sides, in this case my friends picked the BBQ Spiced Fries and Smoky Pit Beans. Now I’ve had the pit beans and they are super tasty, very smoky with a proper BBQ flavour. The spiced fries are also wonderfully more-ish. Think of those spicy fries a famous chain make, but far better.

Ole Smoky Burger

Another friend picked the Ole Smoky Burger. A beast of a burger with a patty, 18 hour Smoked Pulled Pork, Smoked Bacon, Jack Cheese and of course a smoky BBQ Sauce. The burgers come with the BBQ Spiced Fries and are mighty big – I don’t think this picture does the size justice. My friend said the patty was perfect – not dry and well seasoned. The Pulled Pork was not too sweet and worked perfectly with the cheese. Plus the Pavement Vaults bake their own brioche buns on site, which are wonderful according to my friend. So I think next time I will have to try out a burger!

Jacob’s Ladder Beef Short Rib

Last up is my choice. The Big Ol’ Jacob’s Ladder Beef Short Rib. This is rubbed in a Texas Style Rub, Smoked for 18 hours Low & Slow and you can really bloomin’ tell. The meat was succulent and just fell off the bone. The rub was sweet but smoky and completely more-ish. The BBQ Spiced Fries and Mac n Cheese made the perfect accompaniments. I would highly recommend picking this Pitmaster Tray on a visit to the Pavement Vaults.

Overall we really enjoyed our lunch at the Pavement Vaults. There were moments where things took a bit longer to arrive than we thought they would (the drinks mainly). But a busy bar on the side of a busy restaurant obviously means a lot of punters. Other than that slight hiccup, there were no issues. The food was all well cooked, the portion sizes make for a very filling lunch to help aid a boozy afternoon! We will definitely be back I’m sure!