Rapp’s Café,

11-13, Milton Street, Saltburn-by-the-Sea, TS12 1DH

Tel: 01287-625354

Web: rappscafe.uk

Ambience: 8

Covid-Security: 8

Service: 8

Food quality: 7

Value for money: 7

USUALLY at Saltburn, the sea is so cold that it doesn’t just numb your body but it gnaws at your bones, eating away your ankles and withering your legs before you can even think about ducking your torso beneath the waves.

But last week, at the peak of the summer heatwave, was different. The tide was rolling in over the miles of golden, sun-baked sands, warming the water just enough to make a dip a tolerable, even exhilarating, experience.

“It’s not quite the same as Spain,” said my daughter, Genevieve, as after 15 minutes of immersion, the cold began to bite.

As the tide came in, it pushed the people up the beach. Every seventh wave created a mini-tsunami for those nearest the water’s edge, its fingers creeping into the towelled encampments, carrying off flip-flops and beach balls as the sunbathers hurriedly awoke to their peril and dragged all they could lay their hands on to higher, drier, ground.

The remorselessness of the water meant that the people were pushed off the beach onto the pebbles, and then they were pushed off the pebbles onto the prom.

But the prom was full of queues snaking away from the fish and chip stands – modern queues, socially distant queues, that stretched so far that ends got lost in the people milling around in the colourful beach huts.

The Seaview restaurant, next to the pierhead car park, serves what is undoubtedly the best fish and chips in the area – that perfect balance between dry crispy batter and brilliant white, moist fish – but this summer it is being rebuilt. So would we join the snaking queues of people searching for lunch, or we would we allow the tide to push us further off the beach, up the cliff and into the town?

Milton Street is the first street you come to running parallel with the cliff edge. Its shops and cafes retain remnants of the glass canopies that projected over the pavements in the resort’s Victorian heyday.

In Spain when you come off the beach, all the restaurants have their menus in full view, trying to tempt you in. In Saltburn, the menus are kept protectively by the waitresses who only let you look once you’ve committed and taken your seat.

So, at random, we chose Rapp’s Café, and when the menu arrived, we discovered it was short – eight mains and three salads – but quite remarkably varied and unpredictable.

There were two fish items – grilled seabass, and salmon linguine – and two meat items – a burger and a chicken wrap – and three vegetarian options (roast veg and halloumi wrap, an aromatic pea burger, tomato and pesto rigatoni), and a vegan beetroot burger that was topped with “BBQ-pulled jackfruit”, which sounds quite something.

Petra, my wife, had the goats cheese salad (£8.95), which had ample pieces of cheese amongst the greenery, the sundried tomatoes and the crunchy croutons. She pronounced it a nice, light dish, perfect for the summery day.

Theo, our son, and I had the homemade steak burger (£10.95), although for an additional £1, I had a rasher of bacon. It was a fine amalgam of tastes, a juicy patty with a slather of melted cheese and a great dollop of sweet red onion marmalade. Given the size and sweetness of the dollop, the slightly salty bacon worked pretty well, restoring the savouriness of the dish.

It came with a little salad, and a portion of very good fries.

Genevieve went for the chicken shawarma wrap (£10.95), in which the chicken had a nice tikka-y taste and a chilli sauce added the slightest heat.

All our dishes were nicely presented on turquoise plates which were the colour of the sea in Spain, which is the closest we are going to get to it this year.

Being British and bald, I had persuaded the family not to sit outside beneath the canopies in the full glare of the sun, so we were pleasantly just inside the cafe door, and able to admire the fine collection of odd-shaped vintage mirrors hanging by chains on the walls. The wall to the toilets was graced with an interwar-style mural of idealised families enjoying healthy activities beneath sensible sunhats on the beach – their honed physiques and creamy clear skins a far cry from some of the tattooed and wobbly sights that we had seen running away from the incoming tide that morning.

There were four desserts, each £5.50. Theo had the chocolate and pecan brownie, which came with honeycomb ice cream and a chocolate sauce, while Genevieve had the sticky toffee pudding, which came with butterscotch sauce and ginger ice cream. Theo demolished his before it could be photographed, while Genevieve’s lasted a little longer as she savoured the ginger ice cream which worked surprisingly well with the toffee. They were both very good.

I’d chosen the vegan Chocolate Obsession, which was an “indulgent brownie topped with a sprinkling of gold (gluten free)”. I’d never had gluten-free gold before, but it was just little crystals on top of an enormous slab of dense brownie. I’m glad I had broken the vegan-ness of the dessert by asking for a scoop of honeycomb ice cream because not only was the ice cream delightful but it also enabled me to wade through the heaviness of the brownie. Without it, I would have been defeated.

The bill for the four of us came to £70. Petra and Genevieve said it was a preferable seaside lunch to a stomach-crashing portion of fatty fish and chips while Theo and I would rather have been on a bench on the pier with a carton of white cod and a pile of deep fried potatoes on our knees, salt crystals on our fingers, squirty sachets of ketchup on the floor and a polystyrene cup of curry sauce by our side.

It wasn’t quite Spain, but it was a lovely British summer day out.