Dine Around the World with NE1 Newcastle Restaurant Week
Take a culinary journey across the globe with NE1 Newcastle Restaurant Week this summer
Newcastle is blessed with an astonishing range of international cuisines and and Restaurant Week is a perfect time to try something you might normally be a little wary of.
Perhaps you’ve always been wary of sashimi, or tiptoed around tapas: the £15, £20 and £25 offers available during Restaurant Week mean you can tantalize your taste buds with something new without breaking the bank.
So come with us as we take you around the world, one restaurant at a time, all without leaving the heart of Newcastle.
France
Let’s start our journey close to home. For a long time in this country, French food was perceived as posh – snobbish even – and there is still a place for that kind of haute cuisine, but the more casual, rustic, bistro-style fare has been gaining in popularity.
A great example of that is The French Quarter on Westgate Road, which is offering two courses for £20 and three for £25 during Restaurant Week, so you can enjoy plenty authentic and rustic French dishes like homemade fish rillette pâté or chicken teamed with a creamy mushroom-tarragon sauce.
The Newcastle outpost of popular bistro chain Cote Brasserie is another excellent place to try modern French cuisine and they're offering a four-course meal and a drink for £25 including olives to share, starters like salade au bacon and mains including pan-fried sea bass. Let's not forget dessert...chocolate mousse anyone?
The much-loved Hotel du Vin is offering two courses for £20 or two for £25 in its delightful dining room, where you can enjoy some bistro classics like chicken liver parfait and crème brûlée for a bargain price.
Spain
A romantic train journey over the Pyrenees and it’s time to say 'hola' to some delicious Spanish food during Restaurant Week.
Both branches of Kaltur - on High Bridge and Dean Street - have been doing amazing things with tapas and small plates for a few years now, and their three plates for £25 offer means unusual dishes like wild bluefin red tuna tartar and Galician grilled octopus are yours to try.
Quayside restaurant El Torero is offering three tapas for £15 or three tapas and a dessert for £20, while its Leazes Park Road sister restaurant El Coto is offering bread and olives to start followed by three tapas for £15, so dishes like chorizo, albondigas and croquetas can be yours for a (flamenco) song.
Perfectly situated, gorgeously decorated and full of tempting tapas, Cafe Andaluz is the final Spanish restaurant on our list. During Restaurant Week, you can enjoy three tapas at lunch for £15 or three tapas and a dessert at dinner for £20. The butifarra negra and the pescado adobado both look particularly tempting.
Italy
A little further east across the Med and we’re in Italy – the birthplace of pizza, pasta and all other kinds of tasty treats. Luckily, Italian cuisine is well represented during Restaurant Week.
Dean Street mainstay Marco Polo has been cooking up delicious Italian food in Newcastle for more than fifty years and a wonderful meal is promised with their two courses for £20 or three courses for £25 offer. Expect dishes like tuna crostini, slow-cooked lamb shoulder fettucine and yoghurt panna cotta.
Zucchini Pasta Bar is a temple of pasta, a casual cavalcade of Italy’s greatest gift to the world. There’s a two dishes for £15 or three dishes for £20 offer on during Restaurant Week and pasta lovers will be in heaven with fare like pappardelle beef shin and oxtail ragu and the vegan-friendly orecchiette roast red pepper sugo.
Perhaps the highest profile Italian joint in the city is Gino D’Acampo Restaurant on the Quayside who have a trio of Restaurant Week deals - two or three courses during the day for £15 and £20 respectively, or a three-course meal after 5pm for £25. We don't know about you, but the trofie with smoked salmon is certainly making our mouths water.
And fellow Quayside-based Italian restaurant Gusto's offer - two courses for £20 or three for £25 - gives you the chance to enjoy dishes like lemon and pepper calamari, rigatoni arrabbiata and bombolini.
Greece
To the far side of the Med now and to Greece. Everyone always comes back from the Greek islands raving about the food, but there’s great Greek cuisine right here on our doorstep in Newcastle.
Bigg Market favourite Kafeneon is offering two courses for £15 or three courses for £20 and that includes dishes like keftedes, beef stifado and baklava - all hard to resist considering the restaurant's reputation for amazing Greek food.
Over at Grainger Market, multi-award winning purveyors of Greek street food Acropolis have an equally tempting trio of offers available - a wrap and halloumi bites for £15, a platter of Greek eats plus halloumi bites for £20 or a platter and two sides for £25.
USA
Moving further afield, we’re headed to over to the U.S. of A. for some of that great food you always see in movies and want to get stuck into.
American food can feel ubiquitous but proper diner food is comfort food par excellence, and veritable institution Hard Rock Cafe has a reputation for doing things right. Offering two courses for £15 and three for £20, you can chow down on staples like pulled pork sliders, half a rack of ribs and apple pie and still have change for the jukebox.
Burger lovers are in for a treat this Restaurant Week too. Tyneside burger institution Fat Hippo is offering a starter, burger and a side for only £15 at its Shakespeare Street location. That means one of its eight pun-tastic and tasty burgers (the Swiss Tony is delicious!) and starters and sides like frickles and fries.
Over at the Bigg Market, popular eatery Meat:Stack will be cooking up a burger special just for Restaurant Week (stay tuned for the big reveal!) and has £15, £20 and £25 deals offering various burger/drink/side combos.
And home of all things chicken - Hen & Hops on High Bridge Street - is offering two courses for £15 and three for £20, which includes some seriously finger-licking good chicken options like the Fowl Play Burger - a chicken patty topped with blue cheese mayo, lettuce and and buffalo sauce.
The Caribbean & Latin America
Of course, the USA is surrounded on all sides by countries offering their own brilliant cuisines which you can try here in the heart of Newcastle with Restaurant Week.
Cruise on over to the Caribbean at Turtle Bay with their two courses for £20 deal offering tropical delights like garlic pit prawns and jerk pork belly or salsa your way to Cuba with £15, £20 and £25 offers at Revolucion de Cuba giving you the chance to dine on fare like empanadas, albondigas and padron peppers.
Head eastwards to Mexico at Restaurant Week first-timer El Guapo where the three tacos and a side deal for £15 - think fillings like pork carnitas, refried beans and beef barbacoa - is bound to have you saying "arriba, arriba" before too long. Fellow Mexican eatery and Restaurant Week newcomer Motel Mexicana has three deals priced at £15, £20 and £25 offering tasty tacos, loaded nachos and tempting churros for you and your amigos to enjoy too.
Moving southwards, take a culinary trip to South America at Argentinian steakhouse Gaucho who are offering three courses for £25. With steak options like chorizo sirloin and churrasco cuadril rump, meat lovers will be in steakhouse heaven.
Japan
Let’s keep heading west ‘til we arrive in Japan, a country whose cuisine is increasingly popular in the UK, starting with the sushi boom and now taking in a wider appreciation of a fascinating range of food.
A veritable feast of Japanese delights - from chicken harumaki and veggie gyoza to teriyaki salmon and chilli beef robata - are available at Aveika with their two courses for £20 and three for £25 offers.
Aiming for something a little more pan-Asian, The Muddler has two offers happening during Restaurant Week with a £15 deal that gets you two lots of four-piece sushi portions and a £20 deal offering three of their tasty small plates and a side. Their must-try adobo crispy pork belly is included too!
At fellow Grey Street eatery Sushi Me Rollin', £25 get you a choice of two packed-to-the-brim sushi platters - choose from the 'SMR Starter Pack' of the 'Something Fishy' platter.
Thailand
Heading deeper into South-East Asia, Thailand is another national cuisine that’s seen a growth in popularity in the last twenty years or so, and Newcastle has some fine examples.
Take Chaophraya, the Eldon Square restaurant whose food is as impressive as its location and rooftop terrace. Enjoy two courses for £20 or three for £25 during Restaurant Week, including such must-try dishes as sweetcorn cakes, Thai red curry and pad Thai.
Mantra Thai Dining is another tempting Thai restaurant with a menu that mixes the familiar and the more unusual with a £20 two-course and £25 three-course deals that offers dishes like chicken stay and Panang pork curry.
India
And then on to India, of course, home to one of the UK's most popular cuisines. Newcastle has a wealth of great Indian restaurants, so spice-lovers are in for a treat this Restaurant Week.
Khai Khai styles its menu as ‘Indian retro comfort food’ which means dishes like onion and samphire bhaji, Old Delhi butter chicken and their signature tandoori broccoli. This Restaurant Week, £25 gets you three courses at the popular Queen Street venue.
At street food institution My Delhi, there are two great £15 offers offering plenty of the restaurant's delicious street food eats - think dishes like honey chilli chicken, cauliflower Manchurian and south Indian-style fish curry.
Long-running and much-loved Newcastle restaurant Sachins are taking part again this year too with a oh-so-tempting £20 offer that gets you a pre-starter amuse bouche, appetisers like gunpowder fish and mains including king prawn masala.
Meanwhile, there's a great £15 deal on at Restaurant Week newbie Dakwala offering two courses with dishes like onion-beet bhaji, fenugreek chicken tikka and Goan fish curry. Delicious or what?
Britain
Of course, one of the best things about travelling abroad is coming home, and with British food in something of a golden period at the moment, there’s no better time to dine on our own dishes - especially here in Newcastle.
Redhouse keeps things simple - they sell good old British pies - and their Restaurant Week offer is perfect for people dining in pairs with a deal that get you two pies, and a choice of potatoes, peas and sauce each all for only £20!
At the other end of the British food scale is Dobson & Parnell, one of Newcastle's best-loved restaurants that boasts casual fine dining and deliciously refined British cuisine. Take three courses at lunch or two at dinner - both priced at £25 - and feast on dishes like ham hock salad, North Sea fishcake and sticky toffee pudding.
The Broad Chare is one of Newcastle's most popular restaurants, thanks to its elevated gastropub fare. Its lunchtime Restaurant Week offer - two courses for £15 or three courses for £20 - means tempting dishes like crispy lamb scrumpets, slow-cooked pork collar and lemon syrup sponge could all delighting your taste buds for a low price.
That’s just a fraction of the many countries and cuisines represented in the August 2024 incarnation of NE1 Newcastle Restaurant Week and with offers this good you could visit a different nation every night and not break the bank… or need a passport!
Main image: Dakwala
Want to stay in the loop with all things Restaurant Week-related? Sign up to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok.
