When I first moved to London from my home city of Leeds, I was ignorant of the finer points of cosmopolitan foodie culture. Not because people from Leeds can't be clued up on food; it's just that the points of reference were a little different. As far as I was aware, food miles might as well be the distances between the Little Chefs on the M1, Fresh and Wild was an act you'd book for a stag do and “the slow movement” was something that would occur sometime after a large meal.

But a few years ago I was trapped in conversation with a very cosmopolitan food writer who asked me what type of food I most enjoyed. I was on the verge of lying and saying something stupid (“the really small stuff on square plates that come with a single smear of squished berry on the side?”), when I stopped, looked him in the eye and told him what I only just then realised was the truth. “My Gran's food, back in Leeds,” I said. “The stuff she'd ring me up to tell me she was making. Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, meat pies, crumbles and fruitcakes. Erm ... y'know ... slightly stodgy, very tasty and intensely comforting northern stuff.” “Hmmm,” he nodded approvingly. “That's starting to be quite ‘in' right now, isn't it?”

So for once, it turned out, I was ahead of the culinary curve. So much so that it is only now that the 2009 Harden's UK Restaurant Guide is telling the country what many of us have known all along: that the North of England is the best place to eat out. Yorkshire alone amassed 113 recommendations, while the overall champion was judged by Harden's to be Northcote, near Blackburn in Lancashire.

“What a lot of these restaurants are trying to do is create a real sense of place and geography with the food they are serving,” explains Ben McCormack, the editor of www.squaremeal.co.uk and a Blackburn native himself. “If you went to Alsace or Provence, you'd get that, though I think it's rare in England. But at Northcote, you can have a dish of Bury black pudding with buttered trout, mustard and nettles. It might sound like a Heston Blumenthal creation, but it actually dates back to the 18th century.” He adds that he doesn't want to “talk too much about Yorkshire, because Lancashire is better”, which, tragically misguided though it may be, highlights an important point about understanding northerners' attitudes towards our food: deep-set loyalties to your village, town or county can translate into what's served up on your plate.

Like many northern émigrés, my life in London has both broadened culinary horizons as well as honed a snobbishness that nothing is as good here as back home. My flatmate Matt, whose parents run a B&B in Pickering, North Yorkshire, feels the same way. We're particular. By winter Yorkshire puddings have almost taken on the same cultural significance as matzo to us. We have to walk out of chip shops in Bethnal Green because the fish isn't haddock, or fried with beef dripping (à la The Mermaid at Guiseley or The Wetherby Whaler). A slice of Betty's fruitcake with Wensleydale cheese and a mug of tea represent a holy trinity. Speaking of Wensleydale, Matt's mum's lamb and Wensleydale crumble recipe is award-winning, though last year apparently the “North Shields kipper canapé” and the “Chatton cheese quiche” tied for first place in a competition for the best regional dish with a local place name. The fact that such a competition exists at all says a lot about variety of foods locally available up north.

“There's a huge amount of food being produced right on our doorstep,” says Jacquie Pern, the co-owner of the Star Inn at Harome, North Yorkshire, which was one of the stars of the Harden's survey. “I know that's what everyone's meant to say, but it really is true. Yorkshire people are discerning, but there's enough variety for exciting menus and dishes. The best asparagus in the world, I think, is produced five miles down the road.”

Indeed, when my gran is forcing thirds or fourths of good, lardy pork pie on me, or another sausage sandwich, or another 3lb of roast beef, she'll try to convince me to eat it “because it's from down the road”. In fact, she's had a series of intense (working) relationships with a string of local butchers, often with the aim of scoring cuts of meat that I'd never heard of. “Get yourself a nice bit of shin and just stew it and stew it and stew it,” was her mantra while I was a student, her reasoning that the back-to-basics northern recipes using cheaper ingredients would save me money that I could use to treat myself on chips and gravy binges or crates of Tetley's.

And if, in today's financial climate, not spending daft money on food makes sense, then simple dishes from the North seem appropriate. All you need to do is get yourself a nice bit of shin and just stew it and stew it and stew it ...

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