As you come out of the first station on the TramLine (or is it the last?) at Station Street you may well be in need of some sustenance. I was and I was in dire need of some sort of sandwich, preferably not too healthy, I was tasting bacon or roast meats in my mind, but I was still looking for something of quality. I strolled up station street towards the canal and my luck was in. Just across the bridge on Carrington Street is the Picnic Basket, a small family run deli that has been there since 1994. It is one of those places that I keep on passing by on the bus and as I look out of the window and think that I should pop in, but never have until now.
The menu has all the usual suspects, a good range of your Breakfast rolls (we are talking bacon, sausage, eggs here), jacket potatoes, Gourmet sandwiches, and a really quite large vegetarian selection. All at good prices nothing more than about £3.50 (ish). I could have sucumbed to temptation and got myself a bacon and egg cob, but I had already been attracted on the way in to the chalkboard offering of the roast cob of the day special.
The Roast Cob on this day was a Roast Pork cob with stuffing and apple sauce. Well I wasn’t about to turn that down and with a free coffee it was great value at just under £3. It was half decent as well, the pork was nice and moist will a little bit of gravy juice. The stuffing was light and there was just enough apple sauce to give a little sweet hit, but not too much to overpower the pork. All in all it was a nice snack to set me up for a stroll around the city.
The picnic basket has a nice cafe area inside, they make plenty of good gourmet filled sandiches as well incuding one of my favourite fillings coronation chicken, there are many more baked goods and other tasty looking items that are not on their menu. They also sell wine and beer which is probably something that I should not have found out about.
Located at 48 Carrington Street, just a very quick 2-3 minute stroll from the Station Street Tram terminal. They can also be located via their website at http://thepicnicbasketdeli.com/