Yarm

We had not much to do the other day, so we thought we'd take a little trip to Yarm. Ten minutes from Middlesbrough by car, or 15 minutes on the train. Yarm is a small town essentially, with a high street that is filled with swanky bars and nice restaurants. Very trendy and quaint at the same time - even the HSBC has an old style cottage front window with wooden panels and frames haha. 

It's very nice there, but we went in the afternoon and didn't really feel like going for a fancy meal, so we walked up and down the high street and stumbled upon the very lovely, Mockingbird Deli. One of the owners used to provide deli products for restaurants and other delis, and I guess they decided to open up their own place. 

Good call, I say. I loved it. Very comfortable, a little bit Italian, a little bit English, and just a nice friendly place to have a meal with friends. They even had Ray LaMontagne playing in the background - you can't go wrong with a bit of Ray involved :D

Dan and I got two platter things and shared them. The bread was lovely, served with a slightly spicy chutney. The crusty bread went really well with our orders. Dan got a Halloumi salad thing and I got an antipasto platter. Both came with a salad that had this amazing balsamic glaze on it; which just happens to be imported all the way from Italy - so it's some pretty special glaze, people!

A lot of their customers ask to buy the glaze... including yours truly haha. It's just because it's so nice and I imagine, great to cook with. It's not as tart as the usual balsamic vinegar and quite a bit thicker. It has a lovely caramel-y taste while maintaining that vinegary flavour. Definitely worth a try if you can get a hold of it.

The Mockingbird Deli :) 

I got some hazelnut ice-cream next door at Archers Jersey Ice Cream Parlour before heading back to the train station. I think that's my new favourite flavour, hazelnut ice-cream tastes so much like Nutella and it's just heaven. 

/side note:

This was good but not even the best I've tried, a really good one is the one in the Manchester Arndale, that my friend, Sher Ree (love her blog btw!), told me about, it's called Joe Delucci's Gelato. Dan likes the banana gelato from there, it was nice and didn't have that strong fake banana flavour that you sometimes get with banana flavoured milkshake. Blergh. Makes me shudder just thinking about it.

And then there's the gelato you get in Rome! Oh-so-good. Although, that's quite a whole lot harder to obtain, if one has ice-cream cravings (unless you live in Rome, then you've been blessed by the heavens and I am officially envious of your situation).

SO, the questions is, ladies and gentlemen, do you have a favourite ice-cream flavour?