Guides ·Food & drink

The market-town bacon sandwich and breakfast bap

The cheapest reliable meal in North Yorkshire is a bacon or sausage sandwich from a market-square cafe: £4 to £6 including a mug of tea, served from about 7.30am. Thirsk, Northallerton, Skipton, Bedale, Malton and Pickering all have them, usually family-run, usually busy with farmers and market traders by 8am. Ask for it on a bap with brown sauce and you have the local order. A full breakfast in the same places runs £8 to £13, which pushes past our limit but replaces lunch entirely.

If your accommodation includes breakfast — and most Dales and coastal B&Bs at £70 to £95 a night do — skip this and bank the saving. Where a chain hotel charges £12 to £18 for breakfast separately, decline it and walk to a market cafe instead: better food, half the price. Bakeries are the other early option, with a sausage roll and coffee at £4 to £6, and Malton's Talbot Yard bakery and coffee roaster combination is the best example in the county.

Pies, pasties and the butcher's counter

Independent butchers are the backbone of eating cheaply here. A hand-raised Yorkshire pork pie costs £2.50 to £4.50, a steak pasty or slice £3 to £5, and a sausage roll £2 to £3.50. Butchers in Malton, Pickering, Helmsley, Thirsk, Richmond and Skipton all sell hot or cold pies over the counter, often selling out by early afternoon. Add a wedge of cheese for £4 and bread for £2.50 and two people eat well for under £10 each.

This is the walking lunch that makes the Dales and Moors work. Buy in the last town before you head up — Hawes, Reeth, Grassington, Settle, Helmsley — because village shops higher up are few and dearer. Farm shops on the A19 and A64 corridors sell the same things with more choice for a small premium. Bring a bag and a knife; you will eat sitting on a wall above a beck for nothing, with a better view than any restaurant in the county.

Takeaway fish and chips done cheaply

Sit-in fish and chips on Whitby's Pier Road or Scarborough's Sandside costs £11 to £16 and is a proper meal. Takeaway from a back-street shop five minutes inland is £8 to £12, and often fried better because the queue is shorter and the oil fresher. Order haddock rather than cod if you want the local preference, ask for scraps — the loose batter bits, usually free — and eat on the harbour wall or the West Cliff.

Cheaper still: a fishcake or a portion of chips with curry sauce or mushy peas at £3.50 to £6. Small shops in Filey, Saltburn, Robin Hood's Bay and Scarborough's Old Town all do this well. Inland, chip shops in Pickering, Thirsk, Selby and Northallerton charge £7 to £10 for haddock and chips, noticeably less than the coast. Avoid the shops with pictures of the food on the window directly opposite Whitby's swing bridge in August unless you enjoy queuing 40 minutes.

York on £10: markets, street food and student prices

Shambles Market between Parliament Street and the Shambles is York's best-value hot lunch, with 15 to 20 food traders serving plates at £6 to £10 — noodles, tacos, falafel, curries, Yorkshire pudding wraps and pies. Open daily from around 9am to 5pm, busiest 12pm to 2pm. Nearby, bakeries and delis on Fossgate, Goodramgate and Gillygate do filled focaccia and pies at £5 to £8, and several cafes run a soup-and-bread deal at £6 to £8.

Because York is a student city, cheap ethnic food is plentiful and good: curry houses and Bangladeshi restaurants with lunchtime thali or curry-and-rice deals at £8 to £12, Turkish and Middle Eastern grills doing wraps at £6 to £9, and pan-Asian places with rice bowls at £8 to £10. Pubs run pie-and-pint or burger nights at £12 to £15, which is over budget for one but the best value sit-down meal in the walls. Chain supermarket meal deals sit at £4 to £6.

Pub lunches, set menus and the £10 workaround

Pub mains at £15 to £22 look out of reach, but two habits bring them down. First, order at lunchtime: many country inns in Wensleydale, Ryedale and around Skipton run set lunches at £18 to £24 for two courses, and single lunch plates — sandwiches with chips, ploughman's, soup and a pie — commonly land at £8 to £12. Second, share: a large pie or a Sunday roast plus an extra plate splits into two £9 lunches, which no one minds in a village pub.

The other trick is the bar snack tier that has quietly returned. Scotch eggs at £4 to £6, pork pie with piccalilli at £5, a bowl of chips with cheese and gravy at £5 to £7, and cheese boards at £8 to £11 make a genuine meal for a walker with an appetite from six hours on a hill. Add a half pint rather than a pint at £2.30 to £2.90, and lunch in a good Dales pub comes in comfortably under £10.

Self-catering, farm shops and picnic maths

The single biggest saving in North Yorkshire is buying food rather than ordering it. Supermarkets in York, Harrogate, Scarborough, Northallerton, Skipton and Malton sell three days of breakfasts and packed lunches for two people for £30 to £45 — roughly £5 per person per meal. Farm shops charge more but the difference is quality: a Ryedale farm shop picnic of pie, cheese, bread, tomatoes and cake for two runs £16 to £22 and eats better than most £25 restaurant lunches.

For value with atmosphere, build picnics around free viewpoints: the York city walls, Sutton Bank above Lake Gormire, Malham Cove, Aysgarth Falls, the Hole of Horcum, Whitby's East Cliff, Saltburn beach. All free to reach, all better than a table indoors. Tearooms in villages give you a pot of tea and a fat rascal, curd tart or slice of parkin for £6 to £9, which is the county's most characteristic cheap treat and a fair reward for a wet afternoon.

Coffee, cake and where not to overpay

A flat white or filter coffee runs £2.80 to £4 across the county, with independents in York's Fossgate area, Harrogate, Malton's Talbot Yard, Saltburn and Whitby all roasting or sourcing seriously. Cake by the slice is £3 to £5. Two coffees and one cake shared is a £9 stop with a table and a toilet, which matters more than it sounds on a rural day out. Village tearooms are consistently cheaper than town centres by about a pound a head.

Where to be careful: harbourside and abbey-adjacent cafes in Whitby, the immediate blocks around York Minster and the Shambles, and Scarborough's seafront in August all charge a location premium of 20 to 30 per cent. Walk two streets back and prices drop. Afternoon tea at £25 to £45 is a treat, not a meal, and Betty's queues run 20 to 45 minutes at weekends. If you want the ritual without the price, order a pot of tea and one fat rascal for around £8 and share it.

Frequently asked questions

What people ask before they set off on this one.

Rooms worth pairing with this guide.

Ripon OYO The White Horse Ripon North Yorkshire

3.9/5 £71/ night

Harrogate Hotel du Vin & Bistro Harrogate

4.3/5 £111/ night

Bedale The Woodman Inn

4.7/5 £121/ night

24 with a full page

More guides to North Yorkshire

All guides

Itineraries · 9 min read 48 hours in North Yorkshire

Two days, one base, and roughly £250 to £400 for a couple including a decent room. Here is how to split a weekend between York, the coast and the Dales without spending it in the car.

Itineraries · 10 min read One week in North Yorkshire

Seven nights across three bases, covering the city, the Dales, the moors and the coast for roughly £900 to £1,400 for two including rooms. Here is the route that works.

Itineraries · 9 min read North Yorkshire in 3 days on a budget

Three days, two nights and a target of £180 per person all in, including a bed. The county has more free sights than almost anywhere in England if you know which doors not to pay at.

Find a hotel