Hello and welcome to this first ever Yorkie Pudz newsletter. What is it and what can you expect?

Well, I’m Chris, a food lover from South Yorkshire and I’m starting this weekly newsletter as a hobby to share my love of food with, well, anyone really.

It will be primarily based in Gods Own Country (hence the name) but I imagine I’ll hit other parts of the UK and world as I’m out and about on my travels, living my life.

Every week I’ll send you food related news I’ve aggregated from across the region, a feature I’ve written on something food related, often a review of a place I’ve been, and hopefully some recommendations you find helpful or fun.

This is sort of a dry run, there’s been no promotion or social media, I haven’t had chance to design a logo yet. To be honest, I haven’t even told my friends and family about it.

There’s a good chance the only people reading this will be me and my wife!

So if you’ve stumbled onto this on the internet… how did you get here? Let me know I’m genuinely curious and of course please hit subscribe if you enjoy what you read.

Okay let’s get cracking with the news:

Visiting Flori¹, a York bakery, for the first time is one of my favourite food memories.

Me and my now wife walked there from York train station on an early summer morning a long time ago, bought four pastries and two, incredible, basil lemonades and ate and drank on a public bench.

The pastries were flaky and buttery, the lemonade on that summer day was zingy and refreshing and the sweetness was wonderfully balanced by the herbaceous punch of basil.

I should preface this statement by saying I’ve never been to Paris, or Copenhagen, or Vienna or Tokyo or any number of wonderful cities famed for their pastry but in my life those pastries on that day are the best I ever tasted.

And the lemonade is a drink of legend in our household, whispered about with reverence. “Remember that basil lemonade?” “God yea” is a somewhat regular conversation between us. It was so long ago and I’ve yet to find another place sell a fresh basil lemonade where I’m starting to doubt it ever existed at all.

I’ve been trying to get back to York and get my grubby mitts on some more of their baked goods (and hoping beyond hope they’d have the basil lemonade too) ever since with less than ideal results.

There was my birthday four years ago where, having gone for a lovely Sunday lunch in North Yorkshire² we decided to call in York and chance Flori still being open on the drive back home, walked twenty plus minutes on a hot day only to be met with a Closed sign.

They’d sold out.

Then there was our first wedding anniversary, last year, where we planned to wake up early from our hotel beds on the Sunday morning only to be so hungover from a night of food³ and cocktails⁴ we barely had time to make our train.

And that brings us to this past weekend for my wife, Alex’s, birthday.

The plan was similar to our anniversary only more carefully arranged, we’d have food⁵ and drink⁶ on the Saturday. Not get absolutely hammered (a key distinction from the previous attempt!), and wake up on the Sunday to get Flori. We’d driven to York so there’d be no train deadlines to stop us!

So that’s what we did.

We had a lovely Saturday. Woke up on Sunday, walked the fifteen minutes to Flori. And were once again, and quite unexpectedly, met with a closed store. Closed, just for today. That day of all days. The one day we would be there. We felt the universe laughing at us as we had to frantically arrange a backup plan.

At this point, I wish I could say we randomly stumbled on some complete hidden gem place that you’ll have never heard of and made a spectacular discovery.

What actually happened is we remembered reading a headline about a new bakery, Little Blondie Bakehouse⁷, being named the best in York.

Coincidentally Little Blondie Bakehouse is on the same street in York where Flori was that first day we tried it and that felt like a good omen.

At this point though I’m pretty grumpy, we’ve done a lot of walking, we’re hungry and as we arrive and join the short queue I’m feeling skepticism rise that this place will fail to live up to the hype.

It’s a small storefront with doors that open up onto the street allowing room for maybe a couple of people to stand inside in front of the counter of baked goods to peruse.  

Behind the counter, on this day, two people were hard at work making hot drinks and bagging baked goods with barely enough room to move it felt like.

Behind them a cursive pink neon sign of the name of the place is a cool touch. It looks welcoming. So do the baked goodies.

When we got to the front we did that thing you do when there are people waiting behind you and you’re trying to read twenty little food labels at once – panic. What do I want? What stands out? What if one of these things is super good and I don’t get it? Should I ask? Quick just say something!

We ordered 4 bakes and an Americano and it came to £15. The staff who served us were friendly, we paid by card and off we went to find somewhere to sit and eat.

What did we order and how good was it?

Alex got a cinnamon roll, it’s a classic for us and this was a good one. Soft, tender, bready dough dusted liberally in sugar and cinnamon. Delicious.

I got a pistachio cream filled croissant.

Even as I ordered it I felt regret that I was just chasing what I wanted Flori to provide and that I’d be disappointed.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The pastry was flaky and buttery, it was positively stuffed with a silky pistachio cream, not an off putting unnatural green goo but something luscious and moreish with just a tinge of green colour. I made an absolute mess trying to eat it without a plate or napkins but I’d do it again.

(The Americano was fine.)

The other bakes we ended up taking home and eating the next day.

A birthday cake cookie that Alex took to work and I’m assured was very good.

And a chocolate caramel blondie – a blondie with pieces of what appeared to be Galaxy Caramel baked into it, caramel still oozing out with every bite - which I ate after my tea the next day. Do I need to tell you it was good? Just read back that last sentence.

Hardly the optimal taste conditions for those two but they passed anyway, managing to be noticed among the noise the everyday.

Look, will I remember the day I first went to the Little Blondie Bakehouse fondly for the rest of my life? Maybe not.

That’s a steep bar.

One that I’m starting to wonder if Flori would even live up to – not because they’ve changed but because I have since that first day.

And honestly, I think there’s a wider discussion to be had about whether this country is reaching a saturation point of these kind of cute bakeries that sell brownies and cake but that’s for some other time when I’m in a grouchy mood no longer floating on the sugar high of quality baked goods.

As far as bakeries go it’s a good one. Would I go back? Yes. Did it rescue my Sunday morning breakfast? Absolutely.  Is it worth your time and money? Without question.

Give Flori a try too if you’re in York, see if you have more luck than I have.

That part of the meal you don’t know if you really want but someone ordered it so here it is!

I’m passionate about real impartial food writing.

What that means is that I will never accept money to produce fluff reviews for products, companies and restaurants I don’t believe in. I want anybody who reads this to know that they’re getting my full, real, uninfluenced opinion at all times.

With that being said I do want this to be a money making endeavour to cover the small costs of running the domain and the newsletter etc so I’m supporting this with affiliate links.

Throughout you may find links to Amazon where appropriate (like this one, an immersion blender I’ve been eyeing up!) all that happens with these is if you click on them and purchase the product I get a small amount of money from Amazon for directing you to it.

In the future I may also partner with other, relevant sponsors or affiliates but rest assured I’ll apply rigorous impartiality to all these arrangements and only recommend something to you if I genuinely endorse it.

I’ll also throw in links just because I like stuff and I think you might like it too. For example I won’t gain anything if you click the Juice Forsythe link in the footnotes.

I recently finished the novel Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro it’s a profoundly moving work of speculative fiction and I’d highly recommend it to anyone. Never has anything I’ve read or watched ever so purely distilled the emotion of love in all of its forms. Anybody else read anything good lately?

If you’ve made it this far, thanks so much for reading the first edition of this newsletter.

If you’ve got anything you’d like me to talk about, any news you think is worth sharing with people or any restaurant recommendations please get in touch.

This is very much a work in progress so in the coming weeks I’ll sort out a logo and be spending some time pretty-ing up the place so look out for that that.

See you next time.

Chris