Featured

New menu

The Dispensary

The “pharmacy food” gives me energy!
– The Dispensary

The introduction video

The dispensary, a coffee house that only opened in Newcastle and has its own characteristics, has a new product—— Cloud 9 Hot Chocolate to celebrate its first birthday. And for the Pancake Day on 25th February, it also prepares several new pancakes and uploads photos on the instagram, which makes customers look forward to Pancake Day more.

Until now, The Dispensary has achieved high ratings on major local food platforms in just two years, and even has a high score of 10.0 on Facebook.

Among the choices on its menu, the dishes in The Dispensary are all based on the theme of medicinal chemistry, and the containers of tea and coffee series beverages are made into measuring cups and needles, which makes people feel very novel. Among the most popular desserts on the menu, Strawberry Pancake is the most popular among customers. The shape of this kind of dessert is very attractive, a thick needle tube which contains honey is inserted into the pancake, customers can adjust the sweetness of this dessert by pressing the needle tube according to their own taste habits. In addition, every dish of The Dispensary is the best choice for young people to take photos and upload to social media.

When asked about unique online and offline promotional methods of The Dispensary, Savannah Lucas, a staff member at the store, said:

“We don’t have our own official website or a lot of offline promotion, but we will promote our coffee house on social media, such as Instagram and Facebook. We are very active on Instagram and will post many food stories on it for everyone to watch. “

The number of daily customers in The dispensary can reach a maximum of 150, and most of them are young people, students, and families. Therefore, in the current Internet era, choosing social media to promote is undoubtedly a good choice,which can attract more customers who browse social media as a daily habit. At the same time, the location of the dispensary is near the student accommodation and the Newcastle University Business School, which can be seen that it do select a good store location, and this is also one of the reasons that makes The Dispensary business boom.

In addition to desserts, delicious brunch is also available in the store from 8 am to 5 pm on Monday to Friday and 9 am to 4 pm on weekends. Customers can also choose the delivery service from the delivery platform Deliveroo.

And on 25th February, go to The Dispensary, and you will see and try the new delicious pancake menu on that special day~

By Rebecca Zhi, 18th February 2020.

Cheese & Wine Night

Cheese & Wine Night, a delicious cheese and wine tasting event held at Mount Community Centre in Gateshead, was organized by the local deli Turners on March 12th at 19:00. With great interest and curiosity, I participated in this tasting event and tasted the types of cheese and red wine that I have never tasted before.

Before the event, the organizers distributed the name tags to the people who participated in it. After the event, the chef who made these unique cheeses introduced them to the people and distributed the cheese platter enthusiastically. They also recommended a total of 7 types of Cheese to the participants.

In this cheese platter, each type of cheese has its own unique charm. There are cheeses with a strong milk flavor, cheeses with mango seeds in them, smoked and unsmoked cheeses, and even there is also chili-flavored cheese, everyone can feel the spiciness with just one bite. If someone prefers spicy taste, they can try it. Maybe because I am Chinese, I rarely have the habit of eating cheese, but after tasting these cheese, I think that the taste of each cheese melted at the tip of the tongue will make everyone praise.

When it comes to red wine, one of the organizer Diana mentioned to us:

“Every type of wine is matched with cheese. We also invited a local wine sales place in Newcastle to cooperate for this event. They are very willing to cooperate with us, and also for those who come to this event to have better enjoyment. “

When people try cheese, the chef who makes the cheese will help everyone answer various questions about this type of cheese, and let people know more about Turners Deli and its cuisine.

In front of everyone who came to participate in the event, there were several plates of snacks which were provided by the residents of the local community, including various biscuits, pickles, etc., all filled with the warmth of home-made.

When referring to the significance of this event, Diana mentioned to us:

“This event is mainly to recommend unique cheeses in deli shops, but also to give residents of the local community the opportunity to taste these cheese and wines. After all, food is an integral part of our daily lives.”

In addition to cheese and red wine, Turners Deli also brought other in-store delicacies for participants to purchase in cash, such as various desserts, meat and nutritious specialty eggs.

JOYO —— A restaurant focused on ingredients

JOYO, a Chinese restaurant in Newcastle, opened in September 2018. This is the owner of JOYO —— Zhang Min’s graduation program for studying abroad. Like many girls, Ms. Zhang Min is a big fun of milk tea. In the past few years of studying abroad, she has never drank authentic Chinese-style milk tea, so she researched and tried to make a variety of famous Chinese snacks herself.

Wish notes posted by customers on the wall

The owner hopes to connect more young people through JOYO’s drinks and food, share the experience of studying and living in the UK with Chinese students, and let foreign friends open the door to understanding China through food. This Idea also won the Sunderland University’s strong support.

When asked about the difficulties encountered in the process of starting this restaurant, Ms. Zhang Min said:

“There were too many difficulties during this period, but we all overcame them one by one. It took us half a year to select the address from more than 10 plans. Not only should we choose a good location, but also we should avoid stepping into the pit. “

When it comes to the most popular food in JOYO, grilled cold noodles are the most popular. It is a famous snack in Heilongjiang Province in China, both Chinese and locals will choose this recommended dish. Its ingredients include the main dish and also contains other favorite ingredients the customers want to add. Peppers, tomato sauce, shallots, ham, etc. can be added according to everyone’s own tastes.

The most recommended drink in the store is dirty tea (brown sugar hit milk), the first choice for many customers, which is made by mixing brown sugar and milk. This is a good drink that combines nutrition and taste, customers can add pearls, pudding, coconut and other small ingredients to it.

When it comes to store promotion, Ms. Min said:

“JOYO’s best promotion is not online or offline activities, but to make products with good materials and treat customers sincerely. We firmly believe that when we do a good job, customers can feel it, and they will help promote it. Just as the eggs we used in food every day are 1UK grades, not 3UK, and this texture can be eaten and tasted. “

The high quality of food in JOYO can be confirmed not only from customers, but also from the delivery platform Deliveroo. JOYO has been ranked on the food platform software recommendation list with a high score.

JOYO has not recently launched a new product, since the owner is Chinese, she feels that under the prevailing situation of COVID-19, she has an obligation to help overseas Chinese and overseas students survive the crisis. Recently, she concentrated on fighting the epidemic with everyone, and purchased many protective supplies for them.

Preventive supplies purchased by the owner

New kind of coffee shop

“What do food bring to us when they are combined with cats?”
——CatPawCino

CatPawCino Cat Cafe is a themed cafe located in Newcastle upon Tyne. Its concrete location is on the banks of the Tyne River. Although its area is not very large, you will always see it when you walk along the banks of the Tyne River. When you enter the store, you can hear gentle soft music, see a few sleeping lovely cats and feel the warm afternoon sunlight. While looking from the window inside the store, you can see beautiful street scenes, the Tyne River, Millennium Bridge and Tyne Bridge.

The owner of such a creative themed cafe is a 31-year-old lady who has just graduated from Newcastle University. Her name is Sarah Zong.

The interviewing audio on SoundCloud

When asked why she wanted to open such a pet-themed cafe, Sarah Zong answered:

“Because after graduation, I thought that I should do something I want to do, and because I really like cats, I opened this cat cafe here.”

There are a total of seven cats in the store. Some cats are from Newcastle, some cats are from Manchester or London. Each cat has its own unique personality, but the same point is that each cat can bring a feeling of warmth and healing to the customers. Among them, the exotic short-hair cat named Hugo was the most popular cat with customers because of its uniform and fluffy face.

The shop mainly sells coffee, tea and various desserts and so on. Among them, the tea includes western tea and oriental tea, and desserts have a variety of small cakes and muffins for customers to choose. Desserts are all handmade by some local women in Newcastle and other households at their own homes, then the desserts are usually delivered to CatPawCino to provide for customers to accept the next day after they are made, retaining the warm family dessert taste. However, because of the cats in the store, the coffee, tea and desserts sold must be carefully separated from the cats, and the cats must not be given any chances to enter into the kitchen and touch the food.

When asked about how such a cafe was promoted, the owner replied:

“We will promote it by posting something about the store on social media like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And the Chronicle like local newspaper in Newcastle will do some advertising for us as this is a new kind of coffee shop. Also, we will do some promotions in the cafe in holidays or school holiday terms, so we do the different promotions around the year in the cafe to welcome customers.”

Blog Introduction

“NO FOOD, NO HAPPY”
——Rebecca Zhi

Video on YouTube

I am a Chinese foreign student at Newcastle University, and I have another status as a food lover. This is the first time I have used a blog website to record delicious food. Although studying abroad is unfamiliar, food always brings people a sense of intimacy and happiness.

So do you want to know about local food in Newcastle? Or do you want to know the food preferences of the people in Newcastle? This blog website —— “A Bite of Newcastle” will help you know about different local cuisines in Newcastle. And the website will involve three sections, which are local restaurants in Newcastle, the food in supermarkets and markets, and the eating habits of Newcastle people.

Among them, the local restaurants in Newcastle will include several restaurants’ introduction based on the restaurant ranking on some official websites and apps.

The report will use video interviews to record information about special dishes and its developing experiences of the restaurant, and the interview will include details of the introduction about restaurants, dishes and the economic aspects of them.

The section on food in supermarkets and markets will include fresh ingredients and unique foods in supermarkets and markets, which will cover the content in the form of graphic records.

In the section on eating habits of people living in Newcastle, I will further record the cuisines by interviewing people living in Newcastle and their eating habits. The interviewees are not limited to Newcastle locals, but also foreign residents Newcastle people.

My blog website is mainly for some people who want to know Newcastle and the locals of Newcastle. I hope that this blog will allow more people who like Newcastle to know more about Newcastle’s food information and the characteristics of this attractive city.

My instagram ID is rebeccazhi_97, welcome to follow my social media.

Welcome to follow “A Bite of Newcastle”!

By Rebecca Zhi, 6th February 2020