Santa Sunday Lunch At The Crown Hotel In Harrogate ... The Yorkshire Dad Blog ...

Last week we were invited to enjoy a rather extra special lunch at the Crown Hotel in Harrogate. What made this lunch so special? Well no other than Santa Claus was making an appearance after our Festive feast.

Location

For those of you not yet familiar with the Crown Hotel or in fact Harrogate... the happiest place to live in Britain then firstly you my friend are missing out, secondly you will find the Crown Hotel in the heart of town and is just a couple of minutes walk from Harrogate's most popular sites; Harrogate International Centre, Turkish Baths, Betty's Tea Rooms, Valley Gardens and the picturesque town centre with it's fascinating antique shops, richly historic Victorian arcades and interesting boutique shops!

Facilities

Parking in the car park we arrived ready to enjoy a fun packed afternoon with our little family. The afternoon included a two course carvery lunch and activities for the children such as face painting, colouring and a treasure hunt. The hotel was full of festive decor and the staff had a smile of their faces. The room we were in was full of tables and families were ready to get tucked in to some festive treats.

Food

As we we settled in to our table, pulling the crackers and letting off our balloons it wasn't long before we could get tucked in to the food. For the main meal we were offered roast turkey or roast pork, roast vegetable wellington, sage & apricot stuffing with duck fat roast potatoes, roast carrots & parsnips, buttered savoy cabbage with bacon lardons, awesome yorkshire puddings and homemade turkey gravy.

As you can imagine the food went down well as we had two very hungry boys. Quickly moving on to dessert we had a choice of warm sticky toffee pudding - with toffee sauce, banoffee cheesecake - with caramel sauce or a Fresh fruit salad. The boys had the fruit and we had the sticky toffee pudding which was divine.

I honestly rated the food highly, quite often you assume that the food at large events is going to be bland and boring but the chef's did a stellar job and i definitely would go back again next year based on the food alone.

Activities

As i mentioned before the afternoon was packed full of fun activities to keep the little kids entertained. We firstly headed to get our faces painted, but our toddler didn't fancy it and as luck would have the nice face-painter lady had some back-up fake superhero tattoos. My toddler was over the moon with this and opted for the traditional super-man tattoo!After food we got involved with the festive treasure hunt around the hotel. We had to search for hidden snowmen and and at the end we found a treasure-trove of chocolate coins, to all of the children's delight. The children also had colouring table in which they had free rein to make a mess!

Meeting Santa

So the most important part of the day is when Santa came to visit. What i loved about the day was Santa came around to each table to say hello to each family, before he headed off to sit in seat and hand out the gifts.

Forming an orderly queue all the kids waiting patiently to receive their gift and chat to Santa. The other nice thing about this part of the day was that we didn't feel rushed as we each child was allowed to chat to the jolly man and use parents had enjoy time to take photos. Each child got a gift which was chosen well as both of the boys gifts were perfect for their age!

All in all we had a great 3 hours of food and play i would recommend the event to anyone with young kids. A huge thanks to the Crown Hotel for inviting us!

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