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Bargain Travel Europe guide to Europe on a budget for unusual destinations,
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BETTYS CAFÉ & TEA ROOMS HARROGATE
Tea Time and Swiss Confection in Yorkshire<

Bettys Cafe Tearoom Harrogate photoThere is an enduring mystery at Bettys Café in the Yorkshire town of Harrogate. No-one really knows who Betty was, though a large familiar fan following does know that Bettys Café and Tea Rooms is the place to go for a sweet and a spot of tea in relaxed elegant atmosphere. Harrogate has been a world renown resort town since is sulfurous spa waters turned it into a destination for the wealthy of the Victorian age. Bettys Café has been Harrogate’s best known landmark nearlyDesserts and Sweeets at Bettys photo since it first opened its doors in 1919. A confectioner from Switzerland named Frederick Belmont arrived in Harrogate following World War I and opened his shop offering his desserts and meals in a mix of Swiss meets Yorkshire in traditional English Tea Room style. Belmont was supposed to go to the south shore of England where he had been told business could be good, but spoke no English and found himself on the wrong train to the North of England, but decided the town of Harrogate felt a bit like home.

Seating at Bettys Cafe photoBelmont started his own bakery and opened another of his Bettys Tea Rooms in York, designed in homage to art deco style of the Queen Mary ocean liner after sailing on its maiden voyage in 1936. During World War II, the basement known as “Betts Bar” became a favorite of Canadian and American Bomber crews flying missions out of the Yorkshire’s Elvington Airfield (see Yorkshire Air Museum Elvington). The bomber crews signed a mirror at Bettys in York that remains a famous feature today. The Bettys Cafes merged with a local tea company Taylors of Harrogate in 1962 and now operate 6 Bettys Cafés around Yorkshire. Unlike the coffee shop brands of American style commerce, Bettys and Taylors have no intent to open locations anywhere other than Yorkshire, making a unique local feature. There are two Bettys in Harrogate, two in York, others in Ilkey and Northallerton.

Harrogate Victorian photoIt is Bettys Café in Harrogate taking up the first floors of a beautiful Victorian building on the corner of Parliament Street with its distinctive ornate iron awning and gold lettered windows displaying the rich range of cakes and sweet delights which draws a crowd. The tea room can be packed at lunch hour and tea time. The customers at the pastry counter two or three deep to select and debate over the more than tree hundred varieties of specialty cakes, breads, chocolates, muffins, scones, biscuits, tarts and confections served every day.

Bettys Cafe Tearoom Harrogate photoBut the mystery of Bettys Café’s namesake remains after 80 years. It has been suggested that Betty was possible the Queen Mum Elizabeth, the current queen’s mother, or possibly a former manager of the storefront where Belmont established his shop, or intriguingly a little girl who walked into a meeting when the naming was being discussed. Since the name is without an apostrophe, it may be possibly that it is name for all three of the possible Bettys, or indeed all the Bettys who travel to Yorkshire with a sweet tooth. © Bargain Travel Europe

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Bettys Cafe

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