In Lamentation sits just off the High Street in Boston Spa, all quiet confidence and clean lines. You park across the road, wander in, and are gently ushered upstairs into a room that feels part alpine retreat, part modern gallery, all pale woods, soft lighting and the sort of seating arrangement that makes you sit up straighter than usual.

Michael O’Hare, the man who once turned Leeds into a pilgrimage site for people who like their dinner with a side of existentialism, is back. This time, here’s a chef doubling down on himself, his history, and his imagination.

There is no menu, or at least not one you’re allowed to see, which means you need to go all in for the experience and trust in a team that knows what it’s doing. The dishes arrive in waves, a kind of choreographed procession, each one placed with the quiet intensity of someone handling museum artefacts.

A lobster consommé lands first, deceptively simple, clear as rainwater but with a depth that suggests someone has been thinking about it for weeks. Then a poached oyster in a ginger-laced broth, all warmth and saline and a gentle nudge of something Asian.

Things get more playful with a langoustine scampi that arrives perched on a spike. A veal sweetbread dressed as a chicken parmo nods to O’Hare’s northern roots. It’s clever, yes, but crucially it’s also good. Very good.

The wine flight is equally self-assured, a Tenerife white that tastes like melon and sea spray, a Riesling humming with floral sharpness, a red Sancerre that leans into cherry and pepper before a soft, apricot-laced finish.

What you’re buying into here isn’t just dinner. It’s an experience and a memory to be shared with friends and loved ones. In a world of increasingly dull and unmemorable fine dining, that feels almost radical.

At £165 per person for the menu, you may not be going every week, but you’ll leave with an experience that you won’t forget and will be talking about for weeks. And that, these days, is rarer than it should be.

Visit: https://inlamentation.com/