Newcastle foodie guide: where locals eat and drink

Take your pick between toasted waffles with bacon and maple syrup, slices of seared steak with sourdough and poached eggs or focaccia filled with pesto, tomato, mushroom, bacon and sausages for a hearty way to start the day. Don’t leave before picking up a takeaway slice of citrus drizzle cake from the generously filled counter.

arlojesmond.com

Best New York-influenced Italian food: Vinny’s

Nick Grieves previously worked at the River Café and his cooking at restaurant, The Patricia, reflects that influence. Dishes are simple, produce-led and elegant. Monthly pop-up, Vinny’s (held at another of Nick’s restaurants, Ophelia) is a far brasher, gutsier affair, which channels Nick’s love of New York’s so-called ‘red sauce’ Italian restaurants. Expect meatballs, a riff on caesar salad with a vitello tonnato-style tuna dressing and XL sides of veal parmigiana or chicken saltimbocca. Pasta dishes include linguine with clams and roasted garlic (“one that screams NYC”, says Nick), and a carbonara-adjacent plate of silky, handmade fettuccine with pancetta, pecorino and egg yolk. As a final flourish, a little caramelised buttermilk whey and butter is mixed through the fettuccine to create in the sauce a “perfect balance – cheesy, rich and acidic”.

@vinnysncl

Best restaurant by the river: Träkol

Träkol is basically a series of interconnecting shipping containers on the quayside under the iconic Tyne Bridge, and as such has one of the most unique views of Newcastle across the river. An open kitchen with an open fire makes dinner here all the more special, with nose-totail dishes including grilled pork jowl and XO slaw, followed by a sharing dish of ash crust salt-baked sea bass, grilled Jersey Royals and asparagus.

bytheriverbrew.co/trakol

Best for imaginative pizza toppings: Scream for Pizza

Scream for Pizza is the brainchild of friends Victoria Featherby and Alex Walker, who met back in 2010 while working in the entertainment department of a cruise ship company. They found common ground in a shared love of pizza and in 2014, between contracts, they decided to head to Naples to do a seven-week course in pizza making at Enzo Coccia’s celebrated La Notizia restaurant.

They returned to Newcastle-upon-Tyne and served their creations from a J7 Peugeot, a former French army ambulance turned pizza truck affectionately known as Goldie. In May 2019, they finally opened their first pizzeria in the Sandyford district, although Goldie still makes regular appearances around the city. Scream for Pizza bestsellers include the crab thermidor (which reached the finals of British Street Food Awards) and a deconstructed fried tiramisu pizza.

screamforpizza.com

Best for a relaxed vibe: Harvest Canteen

One of the best places in Newcastle for a cup of coffee, Harvest Canteen in leafy Jesmond serves Ouseburn Coffee Company brews (OCC roasts beans just two miles down the road). White walls, communal wooden benches, baskets of oranges ready for juicing and shelves lined with crockery give it a laid-back vibe even during the Saturday morning bustle.

Local bakery Northern Rye has a pop-up at the café some Saturdays, so get there early and order a flaky rhubarb and custard Danish or a lemon cruffin with toasted pine nut brittle to enjoy alongside your flat white.

In the evening, head to the Fenwick Food Hall branch for a smooth espresso martini.

ouseburncoffee.co.uk

Best café: Kiln

There’s only a glass screen between Kiln’s café and the 1265 Degrees North pottery studio, both owned by potter Richard Cullen. So not only can you watch Richard and fellow potter Jun Rhee throw pots as you eat homemade shakshuka, but if you like the one you’re lunching out of, you can buy it on the way out.

The pottery started in 2014, first supplying chef Dave Coulson at local restaurant Peace & Loaf, who later commissioned its tableware for Great British Menu 2018. 1265’s signature speckled white and oatmeal blue stoneware soon got spotted – it now supplies top restaurants including Restaurant Story, Forest Side and House of Tides.

But Richard and his partner Geffen Yoeli-Rimmer also wanted to make their pottery accessible. So they set up Kiln’s café, offering simple, budget food on beautiful tableware. “The ceramics are high-end. We wanted to bring that level of craft to an everyday audience,” says Geffen.

kiln.cafe

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Best bistro: Route

The tagline to Newcastle’s newest casual bistro is “plates, wines, libations”, setting out clear intentions for Route, sister restaurant to North Shields’ award-winning gastropub Staith House. What it lacks in natural light it makes up for in intimate, industrial charm with its exposed ceilings, wooden tables, copper candle holders, Pinterest-worthy trailing ivy, hanging statement light bulbs, blackboards and olive-green banquettes.

Plates, at the hand of chef and MasterChef: The Professionals finalist John Calton, are designed to be unfussy, seasonal and to share. The menu changes every couple of weeks, with an emphasis on clean flavours – think sautéed lamb offal, peas, girolles, mint and baby gem, alongside smoked and seared local mackerel with cucumber, gooseberries and mustard.

Best for an informal lunch: Cook House

Since Anna Hedworth relocated the brilliant Cook House from its original shipping container to its much larger bricks-and-mortar venue, the extra space has allowed her to pull out all the stops for Sunday lunch. Creative dishes to be shared by the whole table include whole roast chicken stuffed with crème fraîche and lovage, or slow-roast lamb shoulder in a Moorish spice marinade. Rather than standard vegetable sides, Anna serves up salsa verde, giant couscous, pickled fennel and orange salad, aïoli and sweet cumin yogurt. Anna says: “I love seeing whole families sharing a chicken with someone standing up to carve.” cookhouse.org

Best for views of the city: SIX

For one of the best views of the city, head to the Baltic art gallery’s sleek and stylish top floor restaurant. The best tables are those around the outside of the large room with uninterrupted panoramas through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Share seasonal small plates of Wye Valley asparagus with house lardo or tomato tartare with cured yolk before moving onto dishes such as wild garlic ricotta ravioli with fresh pea ragu, or cod poached in douglas fir with samphire.

sixbaltic.com

Best food market: Grainger Market

Newcastle’s Grainger Market opened in 1835 and is split into two sections – a butchers’ and a vegetable market. Nowadays, the still-traditional market is a hive of activity, with butchers, fishmongers, fruit and veg sellers and bakers. It’s easy to get confused, with the market’s 14 entrances and exits but once you’ve learnt your way around it’s a great place to stock up on fresh produce, at bargain prices. Geordie accents bellow around the building (“a pound of pears for a £1”) but don’t miss out on the street food stalls that are dotted around, too.

On the corner of alley four you’ll find La Petite Crêperie, a small shop with a few window seats offering sweet crepes and savoury galettes. Watch the satisfying process of the crepes being made in the open window, before being topped with chestnut spread, speculoos biscuits or goat’s cheese, fresh spinach, honey and roasted pine nuts. On match days, you’ll often find the Newcastle football team queueing for a post-match galette.

facebook.com/LPCreperie

Best butchers: Charlotte’s Butchery

For the best meat in Newcastle, head to Gosforth. After growing up in the city, Charlotte got a part time job in a butchers in York before training in butcher’s shops in Newcastle and Knightsbridge. Together with her brother, Jamie, and a Yorkshireman named Richard they run Charlotte’s butchery in her home town. For the past five yeas they’ve been selling chops, roasts, steaks, shanks, bangers and burgers. Along with the shop, they run poultry masterclasses from deboning and portioning the chicken to talking through nose to tail eating, you’ll learn how to cook with every part of the animal.

charlottesbutchery.com

Best for burgers: Fat Hippo

If you’re looking for hearty comfort food in Newcastle, make a beeline for Fat Hippo and its indulgent burgers, either the branch in Jesmond, or the one in the city centre. You can easily spend the whole evening in the cosy Jesmond restaurant, where wooden tables are squished together, with an open fireplace on one wall, and an old church pew against another. It feels like you’re hunkering down in a friend’s living room, and if you live locally you’re almost sure to bump into someone you know. The place comes to life in the evenings, so it’s good to book ahead.

The beef burgers are freshly ground and pressed daily, served in a toasted brioche bun. The Texas burger is a feast of two 4oz patties, streaky bacon, cheese, crunchy onion rings and smoky BBQ sauce. Chicken burgers (all named after films) are just as hearty. If you’ve got room to spare, we recommend you order a side of dirty fries – that’s a bowl of hand-cut chips with crispy bacon pieces and creamy Fat Hippo sauce.

fathippo.co.uk

Best for Sunday lunch: Peace and Loaf

For a refined meal in Newcastle head to Peace and Loaf. Durham-born chef Dave Coulson trained under Michel Roux Jr. and is the antithesis of the food he serves – strong, tattooed hands plate up delicate dishes of clementine, saffron, sheep’s milk and vanilla.

Head there for a Sunday lunch and indulge in roast belly of pork with crunchy crackling, crisp roast potatoes and fluffy Yorkshire puddings. Coulson’s imaginative desserts pair sweet, salty flavours. Think rich chocolate with sharp blackberries and salty, creamy goat’s curd.

If you’re looking to splash out on a special occasion go for the tasting menu and settle in for 10 courses with drinks pairings. Each of the dishes will intrigue you, for different reasons, from the combination of salmon pastrami, scotch egg, clementine and ponzu, to the simply named “cheesy jacket potato”. The food might be more on the side of fine dining, but the atmosphere and service is as friendly and relaxed as anywhere else in the city.

Read our full review of Peace and Loaf, here

peaceandloaf.co.uk

Best for fine-dining: House of Tides

For fine-dining in Newcastle city centre, House of Tides is a must. Set on the quayside in a Grade I townhouse, this Michelin star restaurant focuses on seasonal and sustainable food delivered through a five or eight course tasting menu.

Produce available from the North East is used as much as possible, and the wine list includes English sparkling from West Sussex. Sourdough bread with cultured butter is followed by king crab, radish, oyster and dill before a meatier plate of veal sweetbreads served with beef fat crumb, apricot and black garlic.

houseoftides.co.uk

Best for seafood: Riley’s Fish Shack

The North East coast might not be the most sought-after beach spot for sun-seekers, with its bracing temperatures and strong sea breezes, but that’s what makes Riley’s Fish Shack, in Tynemouth, such a find. Adam and Lucy Riley set up the shack in their hometown as a way to celebrate the local seafood that’s caught in the area, and if you want some of the best fish in the North East then it’s a must-visit.

Queues can stretch for a couple of hours in peak times and, as with seafood, when the fish is gone, it’s gone. Fortunately, it’s worth the wait. Choose between mackerel wraps (cooked in a wood-fired oven for a smoky flavour), chargrilled squid served with crispy hot-plate garlic potatoes and pan-fried salted hake with caper butter. The menu changes depending on the fish supplied by local fishermen, but you can always rely on something fresh, seasonal and hearty to warm you up.

If you can’t find a seat inside, wrap up warm, breathe in the sea air and enjoy a pint of ale from local Almasty Brewing Co. with your food on the sandy beach.

rileysfishshack.com

Best for coffee: Flat Caps

If you’re looking for the best coffee in Newcastle, Flat Caps is the place to go. The industrial space the business now occupies is a world away from their previous location. Moving from a cosy underground café to a vast open space, the new café features a steel floor packed with school-style tables and chairs (often packed with students and workers dedicated to Flat Caps coffee).

Owner Joe Meagher was a UK barista finalist in 2014, and knows a thing or two about the perfect brew. He uses three different processes ­– filter, aeropress and siphon to make the coffee, and there are always two guest coffees on the brew board. If you’re unsure about what to choose, have a chat and Joe will decode it for you.

flatcapscoffee.com

Best for beer: Wylam Brewery

Exhibition Park is a vast green space in Newcastle with bandstands, lakes, cafes and an art deco Palace of Art. The latter, built in 1929 is now home to Wylam microbrewery. Opened in 2000, it stocks 24 core keg beers, four core cask beers and four heritage cask beers that are only available in the North East. The latter includes a red kite heritage red ale, a gold tankard with a hint of grapefruit and a spicy angel amber ale.

The tap room is a cosy space for an ale or two, and there’s a bottle fridge if you fancy something chilled. Book a tour of the brewery on a Saturday to learn about the company’s history and the brewing process, before having a tipple or two.

If you can’t make it to the brewery, they supply a lot of places across Newcastle including Tyneside café and cinema bar, so stop off for a pre-film pint.

wylambrewery.co.uk

Best for Indian food: Dabbawal

Serving Mumbai street food in a casual environment, Dabbawal is the place to go for Indian dishes. Visit the cosy city centre restaurant or bright and buzzy Jesmond site for masala dosa wraps, sweet potato chaat and okra fries.

Try the malabar king prawn curry in a fragrant ginger, turmeric and coconut sauce with a slightly sweet pashwari naan on the side. For a small taste of everything, choose the thali menu which comes with poppadoms, grilled meats, curries, daal, rice and raita. Wash it down with a jug of smooth mango lassi and a warming cup of masala chai.

dabbawal.com

Best for wine: Carruthers & Kent

Located in the Gosforth district, Carruthers & Kent is wine bar, shop and deli all rolled into one, with a tasting room where owners Claire Carruthers and Mo O’Toole host events with visiting winemakers. Carruthers & Kent serves 16 wines by the glass and any bottle off the shelves can be enjoyed for just a £5 corkage fee. There are also wine flights, a range of additional fine wines, boards of cheese and charcuterie, and homemade pies and parfaits.

carruthersandkent.com

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If you’re looking for the best places to eat and drink in Leeds, read our guide here

Words | Ellie Edwards, Laura Rowe and Mark Taylor