Christmas Tyne

If you have wondered down onto the Quayside you may have noticed under the watchful eye of the Baltic Art Gallery a collection of pods resembling igloos. Well the pods form part of the Christmas Tyne Gateshead Winter Village which is running until just after New Year.

Through the zip opening door we all took our places around the round table and what lovely cosy atmosphere it was with a thoroughly lovely group of people. Our very attentive waiter was on hand through out the experience to make sure we were all comfortable and had everything we needed. Christmas crackers were duly pulled, festive hats adorned and the most dreadful of cracker jokes shared but that is all part of the fun. We ordered drinks which very quickly arrived. We were on a fixed menu for the evening and being on a time limit the starter of soup arrived promptly. We all rather enjoyed passing the soup plates to the left around our cosy table. It was a lovely spicy roasted parsnip soup and Lucy is no fan of the parsnip but it met with a thumbs up from both of us and have a rather fab kick to it.
The nature of the round table made it a very social occasion and it was lovely to chat to our table of fellow bloggers who were a thoroughly lovely bunch. For the time allotted this has to be a very efficient service and sure enough soup plates were taken away and after a short while the main course arrived. We were quite into the habit of passing the plates around the table and it was all part of the experience. The one thing that really attracted us to the menu was the lack of turkey. Obviously with Lucy being a veggie it wasn’t an option for her anyway and not that Paul hates turkey but it was just nice to have a different option. In this case for us meat eaters it was smoked and glazed Northumberland bacon loin. It really hit the spot as far as Paul was concerned and just on the right side of smokiness. Accompanied by some rather delicious mustard mash, sticky red cabbage and of course sprouts which safe to say were tremendous. l. Lucy was also suitably impressed with her vegetarian option of butternut squash and Stilton filo pastry. To accompany our meal Lucy enjoyed a lovely crisp Prosecco and Paul a drop of red wine.

Just for info - we went to Christmas Tyne as part of their press evening and received complimentary food and drinks. We're rather thrilled that we enjoyed it as this blog really is about places we love in the North East and couldn't have written a blog about it if couldn't honestly recommend it. Luckily we had a fab time and it's an experience we wholeheartedly recommend. For more information and to book please visit https://tickets.gigsnortheast.co.uk/