Aldeburgh
Get a taste for Suffolk
Deborah Stone reveals the stars of Britain’s newest foodie trail
As British holiday destinations go, Suffolk remains one of our best-kept secrets. While we all know about Southwold’s beach huts and Aldeburgh’s yachtie scene, most of the county’s shingle-sand beaches remain uncrowded and its medieval villages are largely untouched. But Britons are finally waking up to sleepy Suffolk, thanks to its well-established artistic communities and a growing foodie reputation.
September’s annual Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival is a joyous celebration of these credentials, and this year 130 of the region’s best producers will be serving culinary treats to visitors at Snape Maltings – a gorgeous music, arts and shopping destination in its own right (brittenpearsarts.org).
Over the weekend of September 26 and 27, the £15 entrance fee covers cooking demonstrations, masterclasses from local chefs, children’s cookery classes and panel discussions about food production on land and sea, in a magnificent performance space within Snape Maltings Concert Hall complex. There will also be live music, children’s entertainment and lots of opportunities to buy and eat local food (https://aldeburghfoodanddrink.co.uk/).
But you don’t need a festival to indulge in Suffolk’s foodie scene, which has been quietly building a name for itself since the launch of Suffolk Food Hall on a farm just south of the River Orwell back in 2007. Some say Suffolk Food Hall started the county’s foodie revolution and it remains a popular place to buy local fruit and vegetables, eat in its river-view restaurant or enjoy coffee and cake from the café.
More recently, however, East Suffolk’s word-of-mouth foodie scene has been turbo-charged by restauranteur George Pell, who relocated to Aldeburgh after successfully rescuing London’s legendary L’Escargot brasserie and running it for 10 years.
George Pell on the Rooftop Terrace
Pell cheerfully admits that he and the staff who accompanied him from London had hardly heard of Aldeburgh back in 2020, when they launched their pop-up restaurant L’Escargot Sur Mer in an empty 18th century former coaching inn.
Now renamed The Suffolk and firmly established in the same Georgian building on Aldeburgh High Street, the restaurant is central to the buzz surrounding the county’s local food and drink outlets (the-suffolk.co.uk). “It was supposed to be for a few weeks and turned into, well, six years. Yeah, year six, this summer,” says Pell, who is also a director of the Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival. “It's a brilliant, brilliant town. The community's absolutely embraced us, that was kind of the thing. The magic bit was coming up after Covid. I think everyone was so happy to be eating out again.
So you had this absolute firework moment. It was like, ‘It's the best food I've ever had’. I was like, ‘It definitely wasn't’, but everyone absolutely loved it because the atmosphere was there" “And one of the things that we really, really, focus on here is concentrating on how do we recreate that atmosphere, like when everyone loved going out again?”
It’s safe to say The Suffolk team has achieved that goal – and even branched out by taking over The White Horse in Easton this summer. The Grade II-listed pub, about 30 miles inland from Aldeburgh, is so classy it sells Maldon oysters as bar snacks. There’s also à la carte dining, Wednesday to Saturday, and a reduced menu on Mondays and Tuesdays (eastonwhitehorse.co.uk).
Several interesting cafes have followed in The Suffolk’s wake, too, such as Pinch, a café in a farmyard near Kelsey. It uses organic produce from Maple Farm to create a limited but excellent menu including flavour-packed slices of Roman pizza. Staff also make crullers – deep fried choux pastries that look like doughnuts but are as light as a feather – and the weekend-only bacon sandwiches are usually sold out by 10.30am (eatpinch.com).
That’s not such a problem at Alde Café, the all-day breakfast café on the edge of Aldeburgh, where the signature dish is a Bacon & Scallop Butty. Open from Wednesday to Sunday, ingredients for the extensive breakfast menu all come from producers within 25 miles (aldecafe.co.uk).
These include some of the same producers that supply The Suffolk and White Horse Inn, such as 1950s-founded Pinney’s of Orford for smoked fish and seafood. It has a restaurant, shop and online sales (pinneysoforford.co.uk). Alde Café also buys from Ash Smoked Fishes on the beach at Aldeburgh, which is open for walk-in or online customers (ashsmokedfishes.co.uk), while The Suffolk sources fish from Wightman of Lowestoft, about 30 miles up the coast, and meat from Salter & King, which dry-ages Suffolk beef and has a butcher’s shop on Aldeburgh High Street, as well as online sales (salterandking.co.uk).
Suffolk is well known for its free-range animal rearing and The Suffolk uses pork from Dingley Dell Farm, run by third-generation farmers in Deben Valley, and poultry from Sutton Hoo Chicken, both just down the road at Woodbridge. This and other local produce are available in the string of farm shops and delis in towns and villages along the A12.
Most of these producers were established 20 or 30 years ago, when the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy forced farmers all over the UK to diversify in order to survive. Similarly, there’s been an explosion in makers of artisan gin thanks to law changes in 2009, and Aldeburgh is home to family-run Fishers. Its distillery is just a few feet from the beach and offers gin-tasting tours that explain how botanics such as rock samphire and bog myrtle are gathered from marshes along the River Alde, a few minutes’ walk away.
With a small shop inside its stylish glass-fronted building, there are cushion-strewn sofas for relaxing during gin tasting sessions – or you can sit out on decking watching the seagulls while you sip (fishersgin.com).
But a trip to East Suffolk wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Two Magpies Bakery (twomagpiesbakery.co.uk), which took Southwold by storm in 2013 and now has outlets at Woodbridge, Aldeburgh, Framlingham, Darsham and Beccles. This means you can tour the coastline safe in the knowledge that you’ll always get a good flat white and a choice of astonishingly delicious cakes.
Deborah Stone September 2026 Pic Credits Deborah Stone, Shutterstock