Eat Like Ushi

Whitby fish and chips is a legendary thing, nothing of which I knew about until reading about this lovely seaside town. Despite all the travel restrictions, noone told anyone in Whitby and the streets were busy as we drove through looking for parking along the narrow streets, one very very steep street, and near the seaside.

Magpie Cafe and Trenchers seemed to be the popular options. After parking we walked past Magpie with an unclear expectation if we could eat there. Definitely not but there was an easy option to avoid the queue and order online to pickup. So we went walkabout and then ordered later while walking down from Whitby Abbey to save time. Interestingly people in the queue all seemed quite content to wait there rather than add themselves to the virtual queue instead.

Once picking up the heavy set meal, we found a nice seat on a slightly windy pier to enjoy the beach and ocean views.

Haddock and chips £8 was a bargain. The haddock was cooked perfectly, meaty and juicy with a crisp coating top and remarkably also the bottom too. No sog on these. Chips were decent. They weren't salted and a sprinkle made them great. Large mushy peas £1.4 were chunky, coloured deep and not fluorescent. Beans £1 were average like canned. Magpie Seafood Pot £12 was good with pieces of mussels, scampi, scallop and fish, and a very thick buttery white wine sauce eaten with an excellent soft bun. 

An exceptional fish especially for the price and well worth their reputation.

I'd given up macarons for life I thought as I'd tried so many and always been disappointed. To me they all tasted like too much sugar.

Given the reviews and my travelling company, we decided to give these a go. And wow I can say these were truly excellent. Each flavour was very discernible and the texture of crisp shell interspersed with softer chew.

I'm sure I'll be disappointed again in the future because of these.

A little town called Malton is known as the foodie town in Yorkshire. I've been to some of these so called towns before and often wondered how special a little place can be, especially when there are large towns/cities to compare with. And in this little foodie town there is one square called Talbot Yard which hosts an excellent patisserie (for macarons), an ice cream I didn't get to try (too early in the day I think...) and a bakery/coffee place.

The bakery only had limited items by 12pm so I went to visit this odd sounding butcher called Food 2 Remember. It isn't a memorable name at all but they had a decent reputation for pies with only a limited number of reviews. The lovely staff showed me their delightful selection of pastry behind the counter.

The scotch egg was phenomenal. Simply better than any I've tried before. An egg coated in chunky pork sausage roll-filling and a super crisp and seasoned fried coat. It was perfect. The sausage roll had obviously equally excellent filling, but the crust was only ok, flaky but could have been thicker. I have a soft spot for pies although much prefer the hot variety. A cold pork pie had chunky pork, gravy and a nice jelly filling - an excellent version too. 

I actually considered driving all the way back to Malton just to get more scotch eggs. I actually looked at the closing time to see if I could pick some up on the way back from Whitby. Sadly neither of those options were feasible, but maybe one day I'll be back here...

Nice arepa with chunks of pulled beef brisket. Hot vegetable empanadas, with a very mild filling. We ordered sweet fried plantains but they didn't have any, and so gave us plantain chips (crisp and salty, no sweetness at all) and a replacement of chilli mango chicken wings instead (some mango but no chilli).

I'm unclear if this reformed old Ambulance is called Ice Cream Rescue or Ryeburn of Helmsley, but the flag saying UK Champion Diary ice cream drew me in. The menu showing which were the award winning flavours was very helpful too.

I tried mint choc chip (gold medal) and balanced it with some wild blackberry sorbet. I think they were good without being outstanding. To be fair they aren't flavours I normally choose so maybe that was part of it.

It was a little while ago and not so memorable in my mind. Would probably go for the chocolate and strawberry next time.

After getting a galette from Krep and with a plan to eat outside in the Museum Gardens, I couldn't resist also picking up a souvlaki from the well rated Greek food stall that reviews seem to mention lots of queues. On this bright sunny day there were only a few people in front but a lot of people sitting on the tables in front eating already.

They don't do lamb which I'm used to from Melbourne or pork that I'm used to from Greece. But chicken is always available at these places too and is the star of the show here, with the layers of meat cooked to a lovely char colour on the spit.

Chicken gyros wrap - gyros, pitta bread, tzatziki, tomato, onions, chips, signature sauce £6 is a bargain for such a large serve. The chicken was very tender and flavoursome. Wrapped in were lots of fries with paprika. Served piping hot. Absolutely delicious.

The Shambles market in York didn't really have much that interested us in the way of crafts and odds, but a well rated crepe/galette place certainly got a bit of attention. I wasn't sure if we wanted to spend one of our few meals on it as I often find crepes underwhelming and galettes to be average outside of a proper sit-down place in Brittany/France. However this place seemed to have a handle on things and had some nice smells wafting too.

We tried Truffe - mushroom & truffle duxelles, cheddar, local free range egg, black pepper, dijon mustard £7.5. I wouldn't call it necessarily a traditional galette that you would find in Brittany. t's cooked with a heap of delicious cheddar that crisps up reinforcing the buckwheat shell, smeared on top with butter, with a mild mushroom and truffle flavour, and some mustard on top.

Whereas the Briton galettes are crisp and simple to allow the buckwheat nutty flavour to come through, this one has bursts of flavour throughout by the cheese. It's exceptionally tasty and maybe better... (at least to our non-French tastes).