Ever since visiting Copenhagen in January this year I have
been eager to find a ‘real’ Danish cinnamon bun in England. The types you find
in Tesco, Sainsbury’s etc. are flat and a bit too flaky pastry to be anything
like the real deal, the types you get in cans that you roll out don’t really
meet expectations either. There seem to be a few in more Southern areas of the
country but up North I was really struggling, that was until I started
following Baltzersen’s Instagram account.
Baltzersen’s came in to my consciousness following the
popularity of Norse exploding. Norse actually started life first as
Baltzersen’s, a little cafĂ© that serves excellent coffee and Nordic pastries,
cakes, breakfasts and brunches. In the evening Baltzersen’s closed and up popped
Norse, serving gourmet fine dining small plates. It had even got Jay Rayner’s
approval (a mean feat). Norse has since found a new location, I reviewed it
here, and Baltzersen’s has it’s kitchen to itself again.
The kitchen at Baltzersen’s is limited, there is no oven for
example, so a lot of the delicious looking cakes you will see on their Instagram
page. They,
obviously, also sell Nordic/Danish cinnamon buns.
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North Star Coffee |
With us living in Leeds and Baltzersen’s being in Harrogate
I needed a good reason to get D to take us to Harrogate for breakfast. Just
going for cinnamon buns and coffee, although would be enough reason for me,
wasn’t going to convince the chap. Therefore, I managed to tie in our trip with
a visit to the Farrow & Ball shop which just happened to stock the exact
paint we were looking for to refurbish an old set of drawers. Bingo.
We arrived in Harrogate around 10am
on a Saturday morning, it was a bright sunny day and seeing that they had
outside seated we decided to embrace the rare weather. The café was already
busy with most tables occupied, it appeared that we had been lucky to grab a
table when we did. We asked a passing staff member what the etiquette of
ordering was and she grabbed us some menus and said that when we were ready to
go to the counter and they would bring our food out to us when ready.
Clearly, I already knew what I
wanted. I could see them from my seat, piled high in the window. My mouth was
watering. I ordered a flat white for myself and a latte for the chap. As I was
at the counter my eyes were drawn to the other Scandinavian treats that were on
offer, so many cakes, I couldn’t just have a cinnamon bun. By the time I got to
the till I had half decided to be good but half of me still wanted to be bad so
I ordered a small treat. I literally have no idea what this was, and I
remembers struggling to pronounce the name when I ordered it. It was delicious,
although my eyes were definitely bigger than my belly as I couldn’t eat
anything more after my coffee and cinnamon bun.
![]() |
check that beauty |
The chap decided on a more savoury
breakfast of smoked bacon on a rye toast a poached egg and hollandaise sauce. It looked beautiful, it might have gone a little cold before D could consume it all, damn us living in Yorkshire and not the Costa Del Sol.
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smoked bacon on rye with poached egg and hollandaise sauce |
If I ever need to go to Harrogate
again in the future, I will definitely make sure to have breakfast here first.
It was the busiest place on the street, the champagne café a couple of doors
down wasn’t getting a look in. Now if they could only open a place in Leeds… or
its suburbs, its North West suburbs. Hint hint.
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