The following are a list of places that I—David Stewart—would consider eating food at. Links take you to Google Maps.
NB. This all needs updating. I've just—on 1/1/25—struck through the venues I'm sure have closed. At a quick glance the thoughts on the remainder are still mostly correct, but could be added to.
All in all, the food scene in Newcastle is GOOD—particularly for its size—and runs rings around some bigger cities. The one Michelin star place (Kenny Atkins' House of Tides) is excellent, but strict fine-dining is not what Newcastle does best. My top three:
Go to Khai Khai, if you do nothing else. (Or indeed its new sibling DOOD.)
For lunch, my principal recommendation is to wander to Grainger Market where a cornucopia of options await.
Go drinking in the Ouseburn.
Nearest to the universities.
M&S Food Hall, Supermarket 2.5/5, ~£3 for a sandwich. The coward's choice, but it's quick and easy and 1 min from the Herschel Building: cross the road and wander through the bus station. Their Best Ever Prawn Sandwich is alright.
Shijo, Japanese 1.5/5, ~£5 for lunch. Very basic Japanese caff based in Haymarket Stn. Everything cooked out of catering packets but it's edible and comes in huge portions. Prawn Katsu Curry on rice not too bad and you end up with so much rice you can stir-fry it at home for dinner. They insist on hurling partially microwaved slices of carrot over everything.
Firestone, Pizza 3.5/5, ~£5 for lunch. Also embedded into Haymarket Stn. High-quality pizza in a variety of styles very quickly served. A great lunch option.
Alley No.3, Japanese-y 3.5/5, ~£7 for lunch. Up a little alley on the right of Percy Street as you go down. Limited menu covering bowls of passable ramen, and katsu curry, with some miscellany. It's a quick and easy option, but difficult to justify over Chilli Padi. (About 4 mins walk from Haymarket.)
Chilli Padi, Malaysian 4/5, ~£10 for a one-dish meal. The laksa is good; the nasi goreng is brilliant. Fried rice dishes also good. The Nestum cereal king prawns are a particular favourite. (About 4 mins walk from Haymarket.) An alternative is Home Flavour round the corner on Gallowgate, who stole one of Chilli Padi's chefs; they definitely have the Nestum cereal prawns, which you should have with the shells if you can bring yourself to eat prawn carapace.
Tea Sutra, Vegan 3.5/5, ~£6 for a falafel wrap or something. Buddhist-inspired place with large tea menu and decent wraps made with proper zhug (garlic sauce). (About 4 mins walk from Haymarket.)
Zapatista, Mexican 2.5/5, ~£7 a burrito. It's an okay burrito bar down Ridley Place. (About 3 mins walk from Haymarket.)
Nudo Sushi, Sushi 2.5/5, ~£3-5 for a platter of pre-packaged sushi. It's not fancy, sushi rice can be a bit cold and dry, but it's better than the supermarkets. (About 2 mins walk from Haymarket. The mothership in Chinatown is a bit more exciting since it comes fresh.)
Shawarma Grill House, Lebanese 3.5/5, ~£4 for a takeaway kebab wrap, ~£6 if you stay in and have it with chips. One on Gallowgate and one on Percy St. (5 mins)
Les Petits Choux, French-inflected bakery 4/5. Behind the university and next to Leazes Park---towards the RVI---this specialises in choux pastry. Indeed their Paris-Brest and giant profiteroles are both very good. There are basic lunch options like salads and paninis. Great place for cake and coffee. (5 mins)
6-7 mins south of Newcastle University. The Gate has a number of chain places which are mostly soulless. There are many options in Chinatown, but mostly they cater for very traditional British expectations of Chinese food. Some exceptions given below; you could also try Red Diner, which has an extensive Sichuan menu.
Infusion. Northeast Regional Chinese 4/5, ~£15-£20/pp. Possibly the best Chinese place in Newcastle and will happily cater for vegans; for example they can make the mapo tofu and green beans without meat. The unusual specialisms are the pressure cooker dishes and house special spicy pot dishes are sharing sized (enough for two for main course). There are some more trad options too.
Zaap, Thai 4/5, ~£10 for a one dish meal. Surprisingly large collection of Thai dishes with many less well-known. The curries are probably the highlight—best in Newcastle, if you exclude my efforts—particularly the deep-fried sea-bass chu chi. Otherwise the Pad Thai is good, stir-fried dishes with rice good. The desserts are a one-way track to diabetes.
Sky Chinese, Chinese 3.5/5, ~£3 for dim-sum, ~£8 for a main. One of the Chinatown stalwarts. Go up in the lift. Best sit-down dim-sum I've found. Aim for 2.5 dim-sum per person, since they are large. There is an interesting regional menu, but even the egg-fried rice is done well.
Chinatown Express, Chinese 3/5, ~£8 for a meal with rice. Very basic cash-only Chinatown caff. Does good roast meats, which you can see hanging in the window. Eat those.
7 mins south of Newcastle University.
All contained in the giant sprawling shopping centre. Basically a collection of chain places, inc. Nandos, Wagamamas, Ask Italian, Chaophraya, Crêpeaffair, Pizza Express, Prezzo which are all largely tolerable; also the less tolerable Tortilla, some make-your-own-pizza place called Pizza Storm, Tapas Revolution, Bella Italia, Frankie & Bennies. The following is of some interest:
Smashburger, Burger Bar 3/5, ~£10 for a meal deal. Far too expensive and not nearly as good as Meat:Stack, but it's a decent McDonalds style burger. A massive improvement on Five Guys.
Enter through the flower shop on Northumberland St:
Fuego, Pizzas and Tapas 3.5/5, ~£12 for a pizza, similar for 3 tapas. Found in Fenwick's food hall. Probably the tapas is more interesting than the pizzas, whose crusts are wafer thin. Decent wine selection and nice airy venue for a slightly more civilised lunch.
Mason + Rye, Delicatessen 4/5, ~£7 for a lunch. Queue at the counter and pick some salads and a more major item. There are usually a couple of hot dishes on the go, but the service for those can be very slow. It's certainly a decent café with some pretty attractive cakes that are rather too sweet, mostly.
Porterhouse Butcher & Grill, Steaks and stuff, ~£30 for lunch, inc. a glass of wine. Meaty and largely expensive venue, but probably best steaks in Newcastle. Sometimes they do a lunch deal which may be attractive. A good, occasional treat.
Dot Bagels, Bagels 3.5/5. ~£7 for a bagel. Pretty good stodge with a range of different fillings, served hot or cold.
There's also a seafood place, which gets rave reviews, but I haven't tried it. Oysters and platters of 'grande fruits de mer' etc.
8 mins south of Newcastle Unversity. There is a massive supply of lunch options here and worth floating around until you get tempted by something. Not open on Sundays.
Snackwallah, Vegan Indian, 4/5. This is really good and really cheap. They do a curry with rice, dahl and 'naan' (tortilla) for about £6. Very good value.
Nan Bei Dumpling and Tea Bar, Handmade dumplings 4.5/5, about £5 for 10. Very unusual to find something of this quality outside of London. Handmade dumplings are made with naturally low gluten flour, very tender, with tasty fillings. The chilli beef is probably my favourite, although the fish and prawn gets a look-in.
North Shore Coffee, Coffee etc 4/5. Excellent coffee, nice sandwiches like Reubens on rye bread and stuff like that with some pastries to finish with.
Redheads Mac & Cheese 3.5/5. Very rich bowls of Mac & Cheese topped with various options. A very filling lunch for £6ish.
Biang biang noodles, Regional Chinese options 3/5. Certainly worth a try. Does some more unusual dishes, including 'chinese burgers' and hand-pulled noodles. It's right in the middle of the market.
Acropolis, Greek gyros etc 3/5, about £8 for a huge pork souvlaki. Massive pitta overflowing with pork shavings and chips and and attempt at a garlic sauce. It's very satisfying
FED's Fried Chicken, about £7 for a fried chicken sandwich 2.5/5. It's alright, and its success will probably depend on ordering sensibly. Their hot sauce is too fiery for the purpose, in my opinion, and they use far too much. The individual fried chicken pieces are weirdly enormous and not entirely successful.
The Slice, pizza at about £3 a slice, 3/5. Can't argue with the price. Pizzas are rather old-school. But it's still a regular haunt for me.
Cubanos, Cuban-inspired dishes ~£7, 3/5, near Redheads. Also empanadas, which I still need to try. It's definitely alright, but feels a little pricey.
Glazed Handmade Doughnuts, £4 a doughnut I think, 4/5. Vegan options. Somewhere embedded in the centre. If you are in the mood for a doughnut, then you're not going to do much better than this.
9 mins. The best and the worst are listed first. If you find Grey's Monument, then this stuff is all downhill from there.
Khai Khai, Indian Grill 5/5 (~£25pp). Go under the Tyne Bridge, around the Side and onto Queen Street. Right at the end is the best broccoli in the world. Everything else is merely fantastic. Make sure to visit this place before you leave, and it's worth every penny.
Simla, Indian, 4/5. ~£30 for a three course meal. Khai Khai has probably stolen a lot of business from this place. It is still a great Indian place with a variety of fish and meat curries from a reassuringly small menu, all individually spiced, and not made from a vat of base sauce.
Ury, Keralan, 1/5. Under new management. Everything was completely incompetent the one time we visited since the change of ownership.
Café Andaluz, Tapas 1/5. The emperor's new clothes. The garish interior would make it fun if the music weren't so loud and the food inedibly bad. It is clearly a load of defrosted stuff from catering packets that are then deep-fried. Appalling.
Sushi Me Rolling, Sushi 4/5 ~£15. Very good eclectically-styled sushi in a rather spartan bar on Grey Street, but the food is good.
Kaltur, Tapas 4.5/5. ~£20/head not including drinks. This is where you want to go for Spanish. Creative tapas, mostly very successful, in an attractive room on both High Bridge and Dean Street. A recent visit to the Dean Street branch afforded us the consumption of a plate of langoustine carpaccio with basil sorbet. For that alone, it has shot up in my estimations.
Route, Modern sharing plates 4.25/5 ~£35/head. Mostly excellent inventive stuff in a proper restaurant which sports an interesting wine list. An adventure.
Meat:Stack (was The Grind), Burgers, 4/5, £10/head for burger and chips often as part of a deal. It's on the Bigg Market, nearish the Cathedral. Does one of the best 'smashed' burger in town. So burgers will not be pink (for that see Bridge Tavern or Broad Chare) but are nevertheless tender and juicy. Very good value, particularly compared to Smashburger.
Pizza Square, Detroit-style pizza, 2/5. Very sweet and very sloppy square pizzas. Not a fan, I'm afraid.
Dat Bar, Pizzas, burgers, etc. & beer 3.5/5. £8-12 for a 72 hour-proved sourdough pizza. Actually shares a door with the Theatre Royal. Another candidate for best pizza---the bases are exceptional---but let down a little by the toppings: red sauce a bit too thick, mozzarella a bit too flavourless. Last time I tried the burgers they were way too dense. Totally overworked meat and couldn't get them properly rare/medium-rare. Sliders are okay. Beers are good (all keg) but expensive.
Five Guys, Burgers and hot dogs. ~£10 for a meal with burger, chips and drink. I don't get the fuss over this place. The burgers are barely an improvement on McDonalds, while the chips are at a substantial disadvantage---soggy squidgy things with far too much salt. The only thing worth eating here are the hot dogs, and it can have a 2.5/5 on that basis.
Dabbawal, South Indian 3.5/5. ~£5 starter, £10 mains. Dosas, idli, chaats, together with some tandoori dishes and curries (probably they're strongest point). Not exactly refined but all pretty good and can be very hot. Decent lunch deals.
Bridge Tavern, Gastropub, 1.5/5. This was once very good and innovative. No longer, unfortunately.
House of Tides, British Restaurant, 4/5. £70 for dinner plus £55 wine pairing. The Michelin starred place. It's good. Wine choices can be less interesting and food feels like it's Michelin By Numbers. Canapés start downstairs in the bar, and I usually order an expertly made dry martini with which to accompany them. You might just be able to get a table...
10 mins southwest of Newcastle University.
Breadpoint, Chinese bakery 3/5, ~£1-1.50 per item. Pretty good collection of items, if you like that sweet/savoury combination. The dough is as light as air and the layer cakes are particularly good examples. Meat in the char siu pork buns is a little stringy and saucy but the bun itself makes up for it. Very cheap way to eat. 2-3 items is more than enough.
St Sushi, Japanese 3/5, ~£10 for a large plate of unusual sushi. They have an absolutely huge menu---approximately 200 items---no idea how they manage to keep it all fresh, but it tastes pretty good to me. They also do great chicken wings, even if I know exactly which brand of frozen food they use.
i-noodle, Chinese 4/5, ~£8 for a bowl of noodles. This place does hand-pulled noodles, and you can watch the chef producing them. They are served dry or in soup. It's very home-style tasting, so quite muted flavours, but fresh and satisfying. The xiao long bao are also worth trying. Menu has some other Xi'an classics.
Blackfriars, modern British 3.5/5, ~£40pp but set menu takes it down to ~£23. Set in an old Dominican friary. Always very nice atmosphere and solid food.
10 mins south of Newcastle University.
Central Oven and Shaker, Pizza & Cocktail bar 3/5. ~£10 a pizza. Good chewy sourdough crust. The mortadella and pistachio one has sadly been retired. Haven't tried the cocktails (two for one all day), but there's a decent enough beer selection.
15 mins southeast of Newcastle University
Zucchini Pasta Bar, ~£10 a plate of pasta 3.5/5. Homemade egg pasta with good vegetarian or fish or meat-based sauces which coat rather than drown the pasta. This has picked up a bit, from a recent nadir.
Horticulture, ~£25pp. Wildly popular place doing small plates of mezze-style things, but it's not a patch on Kiln in the Ouseburn.
15 mins south/southeast of Newcastle University.
Broad Chare, Gastropub, 4.5/5. ~£30 for a three course meal, though the dish of the day is £12.50. Some sharing dishes. Pretty much impeccable traditional British food and service. On a recent visit, a chunk of halibut was particularly expertly cooked. It is very popular and is mostly essential to book, though they will let you eat from a reduced menu in the bar. The Sunday lunch is particularly fine.
Café 21, British Restaurant, 4.5/5. ~£40 for a three course meal, with early evening and lunch deals. Upmarket sister restaurant of the Broad Chare, with a similarly fantastic Sunday lunch and somewhat more expensive ingredients.
Cross over via whichever bridge you come to. The main reason to come here for food is:
Traköl, modern British food for sharing 4.5/5, ~£40-50pp. Famous for its 1/2 pigs head for sharing, it is impeccably crisp. But if you want to attempt this, I would do so with at least six, since even for me, it is rather aggressively rich. Beside the head, they cook various things over their open fire, on which point the lamb asado is always worth a try. Vegetarians are reasonably well-catered for. Make sure to order a portion of the fermented potatoes.
25 mins east/southeast of Newcastle University. It's a kind of bohemian warehouse experience centred around the eponymous rivulet. Mainly the reason to be here is for the pubs: do a mini-crawl taking in the Free Trade (best pub in Newcastle) and the Tyne Bar, possibly The Cluny or The Ship, and ending at the Cumberland Arms. That said, a very successful crawl could end in:
Kiln, 4/5 ~£30 Mediterranean small plates. Really good varied sharing plates of decorated hummus, whole grilled fish, slow cooked lamb and so on. Good for vegetarians.
or indeed the Cookhouse, which has rave reviews but which I have not yet sampled. The Free Trade often sports a street food van.
10 mins northeast from the Haymarket. The dinner places to go are The Patricia £40pp, 4/5, but worth it for a nice dinner, and Jesmond Dene Hotel, similar price, similar rating but more predictable food. The latter is a lovely venue. Avoid Peace and Loaf despite its reputation. Many cafés, scattered around the Osborne Road with ARLO possibly the best. Dosa Kitchen is great for South Indian options. There's also a branch of Dabbawal (see above). Taste of Persia gets very good reviews.
About 30 mins out on the Tyne & Wear Metro on the South of the Tyne.
Go to Colman's 5/5 for the best fish & chips I've ever had. There's also Colman's Seafood Temple, 4.5/5 which is also excellent, but spreads itself across more modern dishes. Consider this just a food outing, since there's not so much to do in South Shields.
About 30 mins out on the Tyne & Wear Metro on the North side of the river. You can do a nice walk (c20 mins) from the Fish Quay in North Shields to Tynemouth, following the coastline round and ending up at the abbey.
Tynemouth is a posh part of town, centred around a ruined abbey and WWII gun emplacement you can visit. Longsands fish & chips are highly regarded. (I think they're merely fine.) Riley's Fish Shack down on the sand in King Edward's Bay is always a good shout—enormous portions so just order a single main course. Surf Café is good by reputation. The Wine Chambers is a good wine shop on the high street with slightly egregious mark-ups, but some great outside seating at the back, you can take advantage of for a pre-prandial glass of something. Some decent pubs can be found among the indecent ones.
North Shields is a bit rougher, certainly around the station, but if you do an early morning visit you can see the fish quay in full flow. Next to the fish quay are various restaurants, some of which have a great reputation; such as Lobo Rojo or The Staith House. Make sure to book ahead as pretty much all these places get very busy.
About 30 mins out using the Metro going North of the Tyne.
Fair play to North Tyneside Council that has managed to completely revitalise this area. There are stunning fish and chips at Trenchers in the newly refurbished Spanish City, on the pricey side at £12 ish. Also quite a few micropubs have sprung up that would make a great choice for a crawl, e.g. NORD Bottle Shop, Split Chimp, Dog & Rabbit, Fox & Finch, the Ticket Office … there's really tonnes and I haven't been able to visit most. Loads of fantastic food options. Di Meo near the Spanish City is Newcastle's best offering in the gelato category. Papa Ganoush for Mediterranean.