Naturally, in a town which makes a fetish of the meat-and-potato pie, there is a lot of competition to be the best. So there’s an annual competion amongst the pie shops and bakers for the best. This year’s winner, judged by a panel including Barrow-born Hairy Biker and television foodie Dave Myers, was Thomas’s on Cavendish Street. Nice publicity for Thomas’s, which has the advantage of being in the town centre, but everybody has their own favourites. Taxi Bob, for example, is known to favour Green’s of Jarrow Street, distinctly off-centre in the middle of an inter-war housing estate. I can’t comment, as every time I get round to visiting Jarrow Street, Green’s have sold out. The real best pies in Barrow are the ones I make myself.
The Last Resort Coffee Shop, in Lower Cavendish Street, is a real oddity for Barrow, but a very welcome one. An outpost of metropolitan sophistication, or what passes for sophistication, in this most unsophisticated of English towns. (That’s not a complaint, by the way.) It serves top-notch coffee, cakes, pastries, snacks and, of course, Thomas’s meat and potato pie with mushy peas. It’s also home to the Barrow OBCZ (Official BookCrossing Zone) where you can pick up and leave free books – provided that you register them with Bookcrossing and pass them on when you’ve finished with them.
Oh, and you may like to know that I’ll be appearing on Bill Clark’s late show tonight on local radio station Abbey FM, to talk about this blog amongst other things. It’s scheduled for between 11 and midnight tonight, local time (UTC +1) and wherever you are in the world you should be able to link to a feed from the website.
Posted by enitharmon 
