Earlier this year I lamented that you can’t buy a good Yorkshire pudding in a restaurant. But I am, fittingly, in Yorkshire and I have just found some rather sublime ones in Browns in Leeds, where a whole plate of yorkies was brought to us with a jug of gravy. Perhaps this was an order for another table (I was eating a crab salad), but we took them in. I might go back just for those.
I have been touring the Yorkshire Dales, a bit of fishing on the Swale, a bit of pottery painting in Northallerton, where I festooned a dish with pictures of chickens. I visited three chocolate shops, two of which were inspiringly good. The first was Inspired Chocolate, on a trading estate in Leyburn, which sells bars and loose chocolates that you select one by one. I had a really good caramel chocolate, which hit the sweet spot for perfect chew. But the real surprise was the Arriba dark milk bar made from 39% Ecuadorian cocoa, £4/100g.
On to Richmond, the sweetest town with a cobbled market place built on a hill. After buying scrumptious pies from the Noted Pie Shop, I went to Mocha, a café that sells handmade chocolates. It’s one of those shops that, from the moment you walk in, makes you feel happy. The service was wonderful. I bought a very good courgette and lime cake, and several chocolates, all of which were excellent (shout out to peanut and Marmite, which the assistant suggested I try and wasn’t wrong about). You can’t handpick flavours on the website, but you can select the ‘type’, ie fruit centres, nutty, boozy. Prices start at around £11 for nine chocolates.
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