Who is dreaming of being back at the seaside? And not just for the sight and sound of the waves breaking on the beach but for the seaside food that is part and parcel of a visit. Stay in a fabulous lodge with a hot tub on the Yorkshire Coast and indulge your tastebuds.
For those craving the Yorkshire Coast’s famous specialities – Fish & Chips, ice cream and cake – get ready to feast on these three seaside favourites:
Fish & Chips
The Yorkshire Coast is the shellfish capital of Europe and has the country’s largest fishing industry (and second largest in the UK). If that wasn’t enough, the Yorkshire coast is also the UK’s Chip HQ for McCain, the world’s frozen chip experts! McCain established its first UK factory in Scarborough over 50 years ago, and Yorkshire Coast potato farmers are still McCain’s top British suppliers.
Fish & Chips on the Yorkshire Coast transcends the take-away. The region has chippies that are regularly voted Britain’s best (like Mister Chips in Whitby, or Fish & Chips at 149 in Bridlington). And restaurants – like the Magpie Café, the Star Inn the Harbour, the Quayside, or the Golden Grid – run by chefs vying to put Fish & Chips on the gourmet map of Britain.
Visitors can even join a sea-fishing trip or make their own seafood feast – a lobster lunch or seaweed snack – by foraging along the seashore with the help of experts Taste the Wild, Hidden Horizons, or Real Staithes.
Cake: top tips for the sweet-toothed
- Time Travelling Teacakes: world-famous Bothams of Whitby has been a family-run craft bakery since 1865, and is still serving their time-honoured recipes – parkin and brack, ginger and plum breads – all freshly baked from the finest ingredients by the great grandchildren of the original bakers (when they’re not volunteering on a lifeboat, or surfing the local waves…)
- Fairycakes: Falling Foss Tea Gardens (on the Coast to Coast Walk near Whitby) are a child’s wonderland, set in a magical woodland glade by a cascading waterfall, with a legendary home-made cream tea, a fairy dell playground, and pooh sticks footbridge.
- Local specialities: the only place you can taste the Staithes Coble – a traditional spiced apricot, apple, cinnamon and walnut cake – is the harbourside Seadrift Café in Staithes. And if you fancy a Moggy or a Yorkshire Courting Cake, you’ll need to hike to Dale Head Farm Tea-room, an ‘oasis on the moors’ above Rosedale Abbey.
- Cake Lady Sue bakes daily for award-winning Eat Me in Scarborough, just one of the ingredients that’s ensured the gastrocafe has been voted Good Food Guide’s Local Gem for five years’ running, and Best UK Café three times over recent years.
- Traditional homebakes with sensational views are winning recipes for beach-side Sandside Cafe in Sandsend, the Hornblower Tea Garden (a former lighthouse station in Whitby), and Graze on the Green in walkers’ paradise, Rosedale Abbey.
- If you need a hot chocolate, why not make it award-winning? See master chocolatiers in action at the pleasure palace of Crofts Chocolates in Scarborough, handmaking Yorkshire’s best chocolate in front of your eyes
Ice cream: you can’t come to the seaside and not have an ice-cream!
Alonzis Harbour Bar in Scarborough, a family-run 1950s vintage ‘milk bar’ handmaking award-winning ice-cream to a family recipe for over 70 years and regularly voted UK’s best. The grandson of the original owners, Guilian Alonzi hand-makes ice-cream each day on the premises – he can make 500 litres an hour, so it’s always fresh, and it’s then crafted into delicious sundaes, knickerbocker glories, banana splits, shakes and floats – a celebration of the past, but also Alonzi’s love of experimenting with flavours.
The farm parlour café of award-winning Mr Moos Ice Cream in Skipsea has an A-Z of ice-cream flavours from apple crumble to turkish delight, and an opportunity to challenge yourself to the famed Mega Moo Sundae or the Cow Pat, an explosion of cookies and chocolate – you might even meet one of the dairy cows.
Just inland, the Groovy Moo Ice-Cream Parlour in Malton serves the finest handmade gelato in Yorkshire, with flavours changing daily and including bakewell tart, jaffa cake, jammy dodger, popcorn.
For much more information about what to see and do along the Yorkshire Coast this year, to find out more about what tourism businesses are doing to help visitors enjoy their holiday, or to book a stay, visit www.discoveryorkshirecoast.com or talk to the friendly, dedicated team at the Tourism Bureau on 01723 383636.