Baltzersen's - Harrogate

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 café 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.

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.

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.