The deli
Lorna Jackson is a woman on a mission. Not content with running her busy café/deli in the heart of Victorian Saltburn by the Sea, she organises the monthly Farmers’ Market and the phenomenally popular yearly Food Festival – most of it by accident rather than design.
She took over the café in 2011 from her parents who ran it for 20 years, but her back-story is colourful. After leaving school at 16, she ‘did the rounds’ of restaurants in the Lake District before doing a degree in ecology (specialising in organic agriculture) in Liverpool. In Maidenhead she worked as a farm manager, and in Africa converted apricot orchards to an organic system. Love drew her back to Saltburn; she got married and had a couple of kids before putting her apron back on.
In the cafe you’ll find homemade quiche and pies (her brother Dan is in the kitchen) as well as fabulous cake (the Sicilian lemon is amazing) and excellent coffee (from Grumpy Mule in Holmfirth). Lunch might mean Mediterranean vegetable tart, figs baked with Yorkshire Blue cheese or crispy monkfish goujons – and there are vegan options too.
Also worth checking out are Allison & Jonathan Raper’s Teesdale Cheese, and fabulous scotch eggs from The Clucking Pig, made with eggs from rescued hens, and enjoyed by the Queen!
The deli shelves groan with eye-catching bags of Spanish rice and pimento, Italian pasta, jars of local honey and preserves, and bottles of herbs and spices, and in the chiller cabinet there’s fresh fish, crab and lobster, and a fabulous selection of local cheeses, ‘everything we sell is based on finding a quality of food, the benchmark being great flavours’ says Lorna.
From its humble beginnings in 2008 with just a handful of producers, Saltburn now regularly hosts 35 stalls drawn from a 50-mile radius for the Farmers’ Market which takes place between 9am and 3pm on the second Saturday of each month, with, as Lorna says ‘a long list of makers and growers wanting to take part!’
Find a wide range of locally produced fruit and veg, meat and game, garden herbs, freshly baked artisan bread and handmade cheese. There’s wine made in Skinningrove and locally brewed cider, gourmet pies, hot street food and hog roast. ‘All our stallholders share our passion for good local food, and that shines out a mile on market day. It all adds to the vibrant Saturday morning buzz around the town.’
Saltburn comes to a traffic standstill during the Food Festival, which has been running since 2012, with around 150 traders, including the likes of Barista Sisters, The Noodle Shack, Labour of Loaf and Northumbrian Smokehouse. It’s a great event, drawing folk from all over the region – and beyond. ‘It’s all about bringing people together and getting them to buy local’ says Lorna.