Colchester – Yellywelly

Food tripping in Colchester

8 Sep 20198 Sep 2019 Yelly

Food tripping in Colchester today.

We went to try a relatively new Taiwanese food street place named Honey Bear (cutesy, I know! But you’ve gotta love a bit of kitsch, eh?). I had I had a taro milk tea with black pearls (black sago) and egg pudding. Alan had the fresh milk oolong tea, which was okay, but it was certainly very milky.

For lunch I had a I had a traditional Taiwanese breaded and deep fried fillet of chicken beaten until it’s thin and about twice its size. It comes as a “bento” – and I use the quotation marks because, strictly speaking, a bento meal is Japanese. My deep fried chicken was served with fragrant rice, curry sauce, spring rolls, pickled veg and a fried egg. Alan chose a dish from the chef’s recommendations board which was beef brisket served with steamed rice and a lot of carrots!

There was a lot of food and I must admit it was better value than I expected. I couldn’t finish the rice! I did love the pickled vegetables and wished there was more than what was served in the bento.

The taro milk bubble tea was okay, if a little too milky, but the egg custard pudding in my taro milk tea tasted the way I remembered it from bubble tea drinks in the Philippines. I could probably eat a whole glass of just the pudding completely on its own quite happily!

Whilst it’s good to know that there is a “specialist” bubble tea place accessible in Colchester, to be quite honest, I might be happier waiting for my next trip to Chinatown in London to get my bubble tea fix! 🤭🤔

Yelly Writes

Colchester charm

8 Sep 20178 Sep 2017 Yelly

I used to work in Colchester and I do love the little town. I think it was when I started working in Chelmsford that Alan and I stopped going to Colchester often enough for it to stop feeling familiar. I don’t know why, really. It’s got great shops, both independent and popular chains, really good, small independent restaurants (there’s a Caribbean restaurant that does an absolutely divine goat curry that you can get with peas and rice! They even have an all-you-can-eat buffet for £8 on Saturdays; drinks are separate of course. Look for the S&S Restaurant on St. John’s Street) and restaurant names, with more to come as Colchester High Street seems to be making quite the revival (with a Bill’s already established, a Byron’s coming soon and Wagamama opening in the near future as well). Apart from that, it’s got history in shedloads as it’s got a gorgeous 11th century Norman keep, ruins of an Augustinian priory, and the remains of a Roman chariot race track!

Colchester was known as Camulodunum and was mentioned by Pliny the Elder who died in 79AD (and by this virtue it is called the oldest recorded town in Britain). It was the Roman capital of Britain (yes, before London!) but was attacked and destroyed by Boadicea’s (Boudica) rebellion. It was soon after the destruction of Colchester that London became Rome’s provincial capital. Colchester held such a romantic link to the Romans that some historians postulated that it might have been a possible site for the Arthurian city of Camelot.

What I love about Colchester is the history that is all around the town, quite literally. The town is still surrounded by Roman walls that were built after the rebellion led by Boadicea. The Romans wanted to fortify the town and fortify it they certainly did. Parts of the 3,000 yard-long walls still stand. One of the biggest and oldest parts is the Balkerne Gate that stands right next to where the Mercury Theatre is. The history geek in me was excited to find that you could actually touch the Balkerne Gate. There were no protective walls around it. It was literally history you could touch!

Colchester is a mixture of old and new but still has that lovely small town feel that makes you smile. It still has lovely old houses nestled in between relatively new Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian houses. During a trip to Colchester to see what Invasion Colchester was all about last Saturday, Alan and I stopped off at North Bridge in Middleborough in Colchester to photograph this small, charming collection of Medieval houses that were sitting along the River Colne. I’ve seen photographs of it and it has always been biscuit-tin pretty. These lovely pink houses did not disappoint and I got my Instagram-worthy shot (pity about the shadowban, or I’d post it on IG really…maybe I will (if) when the ban gets lifted!). Even the River Colne cooperated and made like it was glass. Pity there was so much coverage on the river or else you’d see perfect reflections of the lovely cottages with their exposed timber frames.

With the fastest train journey from London being an hour and 2 minutes, if you love history, Colchester might just be the place to come and visit.

Yelly Snaps

The ruins of St Botolph’s

20 Jun 20158 Jul 2015 Yelly

It always amazes me how much history is around the corner.

I live in Harwich which is the town where the captain of the Mayflower, Christopher Jones, lived. There are so many little corners that have little historic references that satisfies the history buff in me.

Quite nearby is the historic town of Colchester which is the oldest recorded town in England. Colchester boasts a Norman keep and quite a chunk left of the Roman wall, the remains of a Roman chariot track and, my favourite, the ruins of the first Augustinian priory in England, St Botolph’s Priory.

I love where I live because I am literally living and breathing in history!

Yelly Eats

Hudson New York Bar and Kitchen, Colchester

26 Apr 20158 Aug 2017 Yelly

I’m not much of a beef eater so I hardly order steaks. If I do order anything made from beef, it would probably either a salt beef sandwich or pastrami (the more kosher, the better!). So imagine my delight when I found out you could get a salt beef bagel from an American-inspired bar in Colchester!

I read through the menu and wondered what the food would be like. It looked promising with club sandwiches, salt beef bagels and hotdogs on offer. With a claim that they served fabulous Atlantic cuisine and that they were inspired by downtown Manhattan, I was looking forward to tucking into my salt beef bagel.

Well, I’ve had my salt beef bagel and I was a tiny bit underwhelmed. The salt beef was a tad on the dry side but I guess I’ve been spoiled by the Bell & Brisket and Monty’s Deli because they made REALLY good salt beef from scratch and each sandwich would be prepared as ordered from a batch that was probably made the same day. The space was amazing and it was big and airy. But the concept confused me a little bit because it felt like I was walking into a southern restaurant instead of a Manhattan bar.

Will I be going back to Hudson? I’m not sure. Maybe their other offerings are okay, they may even be really good. But it’s quite hard to get a salt beef sandwich wrong — if you have great salt beef to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, the food looked okay and the coleslaw and fries that came with it were really nice. I’m just really picky about my salt beef. And unfortunately for them, I wasn’t too impressed.