And this magnificent cake shop :
And this pier :
We met up with the girl who gave the party all those years back (now lives in California) and a few of the other nurses they used to work with. Just as much chat, if somewhat less alcohol, my daughter and California daughter got on like a house on fire, and sons walked the mean streets (and they are mean after dark) and arcades.
There are some signs that the place is trying to go upmarket - the old Marine cafe of chips-with-everything teas is now a shiny brasserie-type bar, and several other places have been revamped in a similar Swedish kitchen showroom style. I deplore these tendencies. Fewer fishing boats every visit, too.
These herring, waiting to be smoked, come from Norway.
But it's still a wonderful and beautiful place.
Blogging will recommence when I've unpacked ....
9 comments:
Whitby's been trying to go upmarket since the 1970s. Of course it's the gentrification of the Guardian reading middle classes, who would die if you claimed they were middle class.
So we have the annual folk festival, the promotion of Frank Sutcliffe and the neglect of traditional seaside scruffiness typified by penny arcades.
To an extent the town missed the mistakes of the 1960s. They made a virtue of the old buildings, the narrow lanes, the abbey et al.
The funerary inscription of Francis and Mary Huntrodd, depicting a remarkable coincidence and the resulting true love match, is very moving.
Can't beat the Magpie Cafe for fish and chips, cooked in driopping...
I'm hungry now ;)
Whitby is a disaster for my vegetarian (but chip-loving) daughter.
Her face when I told her that all the chips there were cooked in beef dripping ...
I wonder where the 'dividing line' is, between the half of the country that cooks in oil vs the half that cooks in dripping?
I know there are a few places fown South that do it, and they must have their corresponding equivalent up North...
Hydrogenated oil, the source of the artery clogging trans fats, seems to be the preferred chip cooking medium of us soft southern b*****ds. I do know one excellent fish and chip restaurant in London which uses dripping. The difference in taste and texture is amazing.
"Her face when I told her that all the chips there were cooked in beef dripping ..."
Say it ain't so, Laban!
Mrs. Northwester and I are both veggies.
I hope you're joking. You are joking, aren't you?
"They made a virtue of the old buildings, the narrow lanes, the abbey et al"
....not to say a certain Victorian novel that was researched here.
That's why the memsahib and I visit the place, but it is beautiful, even in the alleged daylight.
Nice pics.
Sorry about that.
Pretty much all 'proper' F&C in Yorkshire's done in dripping, although you'd probably be alright with chips from (say) a Chinese, who IMHO do excellent chips in veg oil or a national chain. You may well be OK in a Whitby 'greasy spoon' too. But a proper chippy like the Royal or the Magpie Cafe it'll be beef dripping. Even Rick Stein's chippie in Cornwall uses it.
Julia - Im in Hertfordshire, veg oil country. A friend of ours often comes down from Leicestershire and eulogises about dripping. So while I can't give a definitive answer, Leicestershire would appear to be on the dripping side of the chip frontier.
Perhaps others can narrow things down further.
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