Exploring an emporium : The Imaginarium

A truly fascinating shop opened in York about a month ago.

I’d seen snippets and odd snaps on social media, and it was my other reason (as well as the new Hobbs opening) for making a trip to Yorkshire’s ancient walled city recently.

Nothing can really prepare you for entering The Imaginarium. Incongruously placed just a couple of doors up from McDonald’s (@ 6 Blake Street, YO1 8QG) I’ve never seen anything like it in my life and I’m not sure anywhere else like it exists.

You may look at these pictures but I guarantee if you go you will see something else, something more. Every nook and cranny of this shop has a thing to surprise and delight. It’s like a wonderland, where imagination has been let run wild, a place to escape to. It feels like something Roald Dahl might have cooked up. With magical music, candlelight, scented diffusers, chandeliers, fairground horses and sculptures climbing the walls, it’s an overload of the senses and the mood changes with each metre you browse.

And it’s very clever. Because ultimately, it’s still a shop: it wants to sell things. But its wares are displayed in such an exciting and engrossing way. Scarves draped on hands poking out of the wall, necklaces hanging from books, potions sitting atop a glass cabinet in which lies a skeletal mermaid. Its items for sale juxtapose and interact.

You’re an adult, you’ve been into thousands of shops, but this is so different that you feel like a child walking into Willy Wonka’s factory, eyes wide with wonder.

Come on in.

There’s more to The Imaginarium than just fantasy and frivolity, though. The shop has a strong ethos to support British and Yorkshire creatives, with the worthy exception of ibride‘s pretty trays (from Paris).

It stocks sought-after textile art by Mister Finch, distinctive printed fabrics and ceramics by House of Hackney, Bronte throws, stamped vintage cutlery by The Cutlery Commission, ceramics by Ali Miller, True Grace candles and diffusers and jewellery by And Mary. I spotted a couple of familiar local names, includingSam Bryan‘s fairies and etchings by [vinegar & brown paper], who I’ve written about before.

There’s much more I could say, but the best thing to do is just go and explore and discover it for yourself. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. And when you do go, make sure you press the button beneath this guy, who was a special commission by world-leading animatronics experts.

If all shops adopted The Imaginarium’s ethos, you can’t imagine people talking about the high street being in crisis. It’s certainly an approach that gives you an experience to counter the convenience of shopping online.

What do you think?

PS Come back in a couple of days when I’ll be talking about The Imaginarium’s equally charming sister shop The Yorkshire Soap Company.

Anna - Angel In The North

Rustique, York

I met up with a couple of old friends in York this week and for lunch we tried out popular restaurant Rustique, located on Castlegate near the Jorvik Centre. York is a popular city with locals and tourists alike and has a number of fine dining establishments, such as Melton’s restaurant and The Blue Bicycle, but it also has its fair share of chain restaurants too. This means independents need to work increasingly harder to stay open, e.g. just a number of weeks ago, J. Baker’s Bistro Moderne, arguably one of York’s finest restaurants closed down unexpectedly.

As their name suggests they serve rustic French food, in a bistro setting. The restaurant has a pleasant dining room, with walls covered with French prints from artists such as Toulouse Lautrec. 
They offer an extensive ala carte menu, but also a very reasonably priced set menu of 2 courses for £12.95 or 3 courses for £14.95. It was good to see there was plenty of choice available for each course on the set menu too, including French classics steak frites and moules marinière.We ordered a bottle of the house white and some sparkling water, which was brought over promptly. Our starters were brought out and we were all pretty pleased with what we saw: they all looked good and we tucked in immediately. I chose the Basque egg and it was a very tasty starter, even though the component parts were all put together in the same dish, they all still had their own individual flavours and were cooked very well. I really liked the mix of the different sausages with the potatoes, and the paprika with the oil from the chorizo gave it a lovely flavour. It looked like a small tapas-sized dish, but it was a sizeable portion to start off with.  I was reliably informed that the crab cake was crispy on the outside, soft and nicely ‘crabby’ on the inside. Very tasty. The pâté starter seemed to go down well too, to the point that my friend, who had quickly wolfed down her crab cake was then sampling some of the pate and onion marmalade!

Pate de foies de volaille – chicken liver pate with french bread
and red onion marmalade.

Pate de foies de volaille –
chicken liver pate with french
 bread and red onion marmalade.

Basque egg – pan fried Toulouse sausage, 
chorizo, new potatoes and peas cooked 
with smoked paprika and finished with a baked egg

After a good start, it didn’t take long for our main course to be brought out.

Steak frites – pan-fried rump
steak with garlic butter and fries

Tartelette au fromage de chevre
 et tomates séchées – goats cheese
and sun blushed tomato tartlet,
 served with new potatoes and
 a mixed leaf salad

Confit de canard – slow roasted
 leg of duck served with
dauphinoise potatoes, red wine
 and red currant jus

For me it was a toss up between the classics moules mariniere and the steak frites, but I was hankering for a decent steak, so steak frites was the winner this time. It had been really well cooked, medium rare as I’d requested and had a nice garlic butter sauce. The frites were thin and crisp and the portion size was not scrimped on either. The only thing I had a slight issue with, and it is a very picky thing, is I would have preferred pouring the garlic butter sauce myself, rather than having it already done. A nice little jug of the stuff would have done the trick, allowing me to control how much I wanted. Nevertheless, it was a pretty tasty dish and I was wholly satisfied and full at the end of the course. My dining companions also thought highly of their main courses, the goat’s cheese tart new potatoes and a well dressed salad was found to be yummy, its portion size was generous. The duck confit had a crispy skin, succulent meat with good dauphinois potatoes, and a lovely redcurrant sauce finishing it off nicely. When our waiter asked if we wanted any desserts, we all looked at each other and were resigned to the fact that we were all too full!

The staff were welcoming and efficient, our food was cooked well overall. The location of the restaurant is good as it’s in the city centre, but not on the more populated streets and a little out of the way. The total cost of the meal with wine was £58.20 for 3 people, so very reasonable and good value for money. Rustique has become so busy that they are opening another restaurant in Lendal next month, so if your in York it would be worth giving them a go.

Rustique28 CastlegateYorkYO1 9RP01904 612744http://www.rustiqueyork.co.uk

Diane - A Tale of Two Sittings 

Deli Delight : Lunch at Mannion & Co, York.

Today I am going to reveal to you a very special secret of mine - the best place for lunch in the whole of York. I stumbled across it with a friend, hungover and hungry, on a day out shopping and we were instantly enticed by the huge meringues filling the window. We ventured in and were greeted by a delightful deli and cafe, where we tried some tea and pork belly sandwiches and never looked back. The cafe is quaint and lovingly decorated with kitsch and vintage items - it's exactly my style and I love the small, intimate feel of the place. Now, I always take visitors to York to Mannion & Co and last week I took my parents for lunch there :

We started off with tea - great quality; my Dad even had real blackcurrants in his loose-leaf tea, and served in cast iron teapots which keep your tea piping hot for the whole meal. We then ordered the Deli Sharing Platter and a sausage roll. The Deli Sharing Platter is, in my opinion, the best thing on the menu, as you get to try a little bit of everything and I love 'picky' food to share as a fun, communal meal. Plus, if you pick your friends right to compliment your likes and dislikes, nothing is left uneaten! The platter arrives on a massive plank of wood and attracted stares from every corner of the tiny cafe, prompting orders for "what they've got" from nearby tables.

The best sausage roll I have ever tried! And now for the platter...

It makes me hungry just looking at it! We stuffed ourselves with a variety of cheese, salami, home-made bread, balsamic vinegar, capers, olives, salad, sundried tomatoes, pork belly and thick-cut ham. Each time you go to Mannion's the platter changes slightly, depending on what they have in the Deli, and you are guaranteed to be satisfied. The platter is just £14, and we shared it between three people and we were still (unfortunately) too full to try some of their tempting cakes. 

However, if you still have room, you must try one of their giant meringues. Served with not only clotted cream but double cream too, alongside fresh berries and almonds, it is a giant of a pudding and simply delicious. Yummy!

Jessica - Jessica In Your Ear