Bettys Tour 2019: Time for tea

My Bettys Tour 2019 is fast approaching. After a short period of acclimatisation at the Doncaster base camp, where my fancy London ways will be thoroughly beaten out of me by my dad, I shall set off for a week of Yorkshire-style purification and self-discovery, stopping at Ilkley, Harrogate, Northallerton and York for elevenses and afternoon tea at every branch of Bettys, with a spot of sight-seeing thrown in for good measure. I’m hoping to see some of the many things that any self-respecting Yorkshireman should have seen by my age, but to be honest my main focus is on Curd Tarts, Fat Rascals, Tea Loaf, Parkin and sandwiches, washed down with copious amounts of tea and coffee. There might also be the odd cream cake thrown in, and perhaps something containing custard.

Before we get started, the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that “Bettys” has already appeared three times in this blog post without an apostrophe: once in the title and twice in the first paragraph. You probably winced the first time you saw it. With a bit of luck, however, you overlooked it charitably as one of those unfortunate typos that can evade even the most assiduous of proofreaders. Now, however, I suspect you’re thinking that three times is too much for comfort and that next time you won’t be so lenient. You might even have had that disappointed reaction that we all get when someone lets us down or fails to live up to our expectations. At worst, I will be perilously close to losing you as a reader, on the basis that anyone who can’t get the basics right can’t be trusted to write anything worth reading on such an important topic as tea time.

In my defence, I would like to assert that it is correct to write “Bettys” without an apostrophe, perhaps not in a strict, grammatical sense, but in the sense that this is the trading name for Bettys and Taylors of Harrogate Ltd (the company which owns the Bettys tea rooms). Yes, reader, this is the point when I confess to consulting the Bettys and Companies House websites to verify how to write “Bettys”. As a result, far from being the sloppy writer you suspect me to be, I am in fact a fellow pedant who risked disapproval out of respect for the wishes of an old Yorkshire institution. I hope that this puts your mind at rest and re-establishes my credentials. Please be aware that “Bettys” appears without an apostrophe throughout the rest of this piece, and console yourself every time you wince by imagining the willpower and effort required for me to write it that way repeatedly.

My pre-tour preparations have so far involved a somewhat half-hearted sugar detox programme entailing a reduced carbohydrate intake and a significant amount of salad. I haven’t eaten a biscuit or a slice of cake for 11 days, and Angel Delight and Ambrosia rice pudding are dim and distant memories. Unopened packets of Waitrose “Rich & nutty” Belgian chocolate chunk & hazelnut all butter cookies, “Rich, sweet & crumbly” all butter shortbread fingers and Belgian Dark Chocolate Ginger Thins, as well as Dark Chocolate Florentines from Thomas Fudge’s Remarkable Bakery, have been taunting me every time I have opened my kitchen cupboard for the best part of a fortnight. On the bright side, I am hoping that the somewhat ascetic and unappetising biscuit selection at my dad’s place will strengthen my resistance to a sufficient extent that when the first afternoon tea is presented in Ilkley, I will consume it with elegant restraint, rather than like a pig at a trough.

My love of Bettys started when I was a little boy. Once a year, when my granny came to stay as part of her annual trip up north from Eastbourne, we would go to York for the day. From a little boy’s perspective, the trip involved the double excitement of a train journey and a tea time treat. The bits in between, involving traipsing about and shopping, were a bit tedious, but tea time more than made up for it. If we went to Bettys (at that time there was also a quite smart tea room owned by Terry’s (as in Terry’s chocolate) in York which we sometimes frequented), we would always end up downstairs in the wood-panelled basement room. I’ve written before about being fairly shy and introverted, and it’s no coincidence that I’m attracted to cosy spaces, especially wood-panelled ones hidden from the outside world. Because of this, I’ve always preferred to sit downstairs at Bettys in York, even though the lighter and more opulent ground floor room is considered the better place to be seated. As for the tea time treat, I would usually have something grown-up like a toasted tea cake or a scone. Later on, when I moved to York for a couple of years in the 1990s, I continued the tradition of having tea in the basement of Bettys, but broadened my repertoire to include Fat Rascals and Curd Tarts. To this day, however, I haven’t visited any of the other branches of Bettys. I’ve never been to Ilkley or Northallerton, and the closest I’ve been to Bettys in Harrogate is when I stepped over the threshold one day almost thirty years ago only to discover with disappointment that it was full. Given that 2019 marks the centenary of Bettys, it struck me as high time to get my act together and visit every branch in turn.

My love of the Fat Rascal started when I lived in York. I have always been partial to the crumbly texture of a rock cake and so it was love at first sight, despite a touch of initial confusion due to the Fat Rascal being described by Bettys as a scone. For me, a Fat Rascal is definitely more like a rock cake. To be more precise, perhaps I should say that, in my opinion, there are more things that make the Fat Rascal unlike a scone than like a rock cake, but the point stands. Firstly, the Fat Rascal’s slightly bumpy and irregular appearance means that it looks nothing at all like a scone. To be fair, as far as rock cakes go, it’s more at the pumice stone end of the spectrum, but if I were an alien popping to Bettys for tea whilst visiting from the Moon, I’d definitely be reminded of a lunar landscape. Secondly, when you bite into a Fat Rascal, your palate is greeted with the crumbly and open texture of a rock cake, rather than the firm-but-not-quite-dense and ever so slightly bouncy texture of a scone. Thirdly, while scones have a certain sweet blandness and structural integrity which makes them a perfect vehicle for jam and cream (or cream and jam, depending on your preference and heritage), Fat Rascals have quite a pronounced citrus flavour which, whilst absolutely delicious, disqualifies them in my humble opinion as a vehicle for anything other than butter. I’ve tried jam on a Fat Rascal, but somehow it just seems to get in the way. I also find that the relative lack of structural integrity of a Fat Rascal, resulting from the open and crumbly texture just described, means that if you try to spread anything other than butter at room temperature on one, you risk the whole thing falling apart. Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, Fat Rascals are best served warm so that the butter melts, whereas to my mind melted butter on a scone is just plain wrong (except perhaps in extremis when there isn’t enough time to let freshly baked scones cool down fully before popping one in your mouth when no-one’s looking).

Another reason for my love of the Fat Rascal is the frisson of the linguistic tightrope that Yorkshire folk sometimes have to walk when saying the words “fat” and “rascal” together. Despite generally using the long “a” when speaking, I pronounce “rascal” with a confidently short “a” if I’m feeling quite “Yorkshire”. At other times, however, I lose my nerve and pronounce it with a long “a” to avoid drawing attention to myself. Sometimes I’m not quite sure how the word will come out until I actually say it, and the result of my subconscious assessment, based on my level of overall confidence and who I am talking to, becomes apparent. But every time I think of Fat Rascals, I am reminded of a friend’s sister-in-law from York, who, when introduced to the parents of a rather posh boyfriend from the Home Counties, decided to soften her accent by pronouncing both “fat” and “rascal” with a long “a”, and accidentally ended up saying the word “fart” to her beloved’s rather prim mother at the worst possible moment.

Linguistic pitfalls aside, my choice of tea time treat is largely dictated by whether it is to be consumed in public or in private. In private, basically anything goes. In public, however, the treat has to be capable of being eaten confidently with a cake fork or picked up without the risk of messy fingers and/or leakage. This means that anything larger than bite-size involving choux pastry, mille-feuille or a thick chocolate coating is strictly off limits. An extreme policy perhaps, but let me assure you that the childhood humiliation of trying to cut into a slightly tough chocolate éclair with a cake fork, causing half of it to shoot off the plate, or of biting into a vanilla slice, and ending up with icing and crème patissière all over your fingers and face, is something that never quite leaves you. I can still hear my mother scolding me for “showing off” in the café at Cole Brothers (now John Lewis) in Sheffield as I blubbed at the sight of that chocolate éclair on the floor, and feel the roughness on my face and hands of the tissue that she pulled out of her handbag (not to mention the indignity of being told to spit on it). Another reason for the non-bite-size choux pastry prohibition is that these days it would be too much of a temptation to pick the chocolate éclair up off the floor and eat it anyway.

The only tea time offerings that I positively dislike are macarons (not coconut macaroons, which I adore), and anything flavoured with coffee or chocolate & orange. The thing about macarons is that they just don’t say tea time treat to me. As far as I am concerned, tea time is an expression of warmth and generosity, more akin to home baking than haute cuisine. While it can be refined and elegant, the desire to make it fancy or impressive mustn’t override or undermine the essential spirit underpinning it. In my opinion, macarons, with their lurid colours and squidgy texture, are a step too far in the wrong direction, and on a par with the pink wafer biscuit in terms of vulgarity. Regarding coffee, whilst I love the taste of it, I don’t want it as anything other than a hot drink. As for chocolate & orange, much as I love them both separately, they are Room 101 material when combined. I will, however, admit to liking Jaffa cakes. At this point please let me emphasise that these are personal opinions which are in no way intended to deny the experiences and/or preferences of others. As a result, out of respect for those who may express different opinions, I shall not discuss these abominations any further.

Although I am more than happy to accept that biscuits don’t really feature in the more formal setting of afternoon tea, they are nevertheless an extremely important tea time treat for me. There is a time and place for everything, and biscuits are something that I enjoy for the most part when having a cup of tea alone, or privately with friends and family, especially after lunch with my aunt and uncle whose biscuit drawer is a thing of beauty. There’s not much point discussing my favourite biscuits because there are too many for it to be a meaningful discussion. All I will say, however, is that I love really quite cheap and dirty biscuits as much as luxurious ones, to the extent that one of my most memorable Christmas presents in recent years consisted of a box of teabags and a packet of Custard Creams, Bourbons and Malted Milks from my cousin. In a similar vein, one of my most memorable “taste of home” holiday experiences was sitting in a hot bath at the end of the day with a cup of tea in one hand and two plain Digestives in the other, whilst staying at a hotel in Delhi which provided a whole packet of them as standard issue. The only biscuits I dislike are Garibaldis and those joyless, unpleasantly plain ones like Thin Arrowroot and Morning Coffee which promise so little and yet still manage to under-deliver. Oddly enough, I am quite partial to a Rich Tea now and again.

While sandwiches are, of course, an essential element of afternoon tea, they are by far the least important for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love a sandwich, especially cream cheese & cucumber, egg & cress, smoked salmon, and cheese & tomato. However, when you’re in the mood for serious cakeage, they delay the most important aspect of afternoon tea. Sometimes that can be tantalisingly exciting, in a sort of bakery strip tease way, but more often than not they just get in the way. Sandwiches also pose a significant risk of spoiling your appetite, rather like poppadoms served before an Indian meal, unless you employ a disciplined and strategic approach, working backwards from whatever interests you most and adjusting your intake accordingly. As far as bread is concerned, I like a mixture of white and brown. There’s something slightly dirty about even the best quality white bread used to make sandwiches that brings back happy memories of children’s birthday parties, and brown bread helps me to convince myself that the rapidly approaching orgy of sugar consumption is all part of a healthy, balanced diet. In that regard, the deceptively plain and wholesome appearance of the Fat Rascal is also extremely helpful.

As regards tea, I’m not particularly fussy as long as it’s strong and served with milk. Years of making and drinking it with my granny, for whom anything other than the strongest brew would be described as “weak tack” and firmly rejected, mean that I tend to make it like gravy. To be honest, though, as long as it’s “wet and warm” (note that “warm” has to be pronounced with a short “a” for maximum effect), I’ll drink it. I draw the line, however, at Lipton’s Yellow Label, which is a total waste of time. If I’m feeling fancy, I’ll go for Darjeeling or Assam, and I’ve even been known to have a cup of Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong. Otherwise, a cup of Yorkshire Tea is my brew of choice. And what’s with the whole champagne malarkey? I don’t want it at the best of times and I definitely don’t want it with afternoon tea.

So there you are. Some random thoughts on tea, cake, biscuits and sandwiches as I prepare to embark on a voyage of discovery. It’s a full-time job, but someone’s got to do it and I’m more than willing to rise to the challenge. I might push the boat out and try different blends of tea and coffee, but slices of lemon will be going nowhere near my tea cup. Let’s also be clear from the outset – this is not some sort of homage to Man versus Food. Standards of taste and decency will be maintained at all times, and there will definitely be no “showing off”, unless of course anyone tries to force-feed me macarons or anything flavoured with coffee or chocolate & orange, in which case I accept no responsibility for my actions.