Weeton's

Within this posh Yorkshire food store, there is also a cafe which knocks out locally sourced breakfasts, sandwiches and appetising lunch dishes, such as smoked duck potato cakes. It is popular if lacking in atmosphere: you sit serenaded by the background hum of refrigeration units. You are very much eating in a shop. A sample plate of eggs Florentine was a generous portion, the smoked salmon decent, the eggs sunny. However, at £6.25, elements of it (somewhat tired, dry spinach; one egg's yolk already popped; the Hollandaise lacking a pointed sharpness) were a little sloppy. It was adequate but no classic and, if you're really watching the pennies, my advice would be to skip the cafe and buy a few takeaway bits to eat in the park opposite. The store sells Voakes's excellent pork pies, warm homemade pasties and savoury lattices, handsome salads and sandwiches. Its Weeton's wedgie (£1.50), a peppery open cheese-and-potato pie, is sensational.
• Takeaway snack items 60p-£4.50, cafe meals £4.95-£10.95. 23-24 West Park, 01423 507100, weetons.com

Bean & Bud

While primarily a coffee shop – one whose conscientious craftsmanship is clear in a sample flat white (£2.40) – Bean & Bud also sells a limited selection of first-rate food. Its remarkably fresh, packed-that-morning sandwiches use ingredients from a neighbouring butcher and Harrogate's renowned dairy dazzler, the Cheeseboard. A sample Coverdale cheese (like a creamier, cleaner Wensleydale) and red onion marmalade sandwich was impeccable. Cakes, meanwhile, come from Brighton-based, Sticky Fingers. That might seem a bit ridiculous, geographically, but SF – a small, family operation with a growing following among independent retailers – makes superb cakes. Its Tunisian orange cake is highly recommended. By Harrogate standards, Bean & Bud is quite the bohemian hangout, too. I certainly didn't hear Belle & Sebastian anywhere else on this visit.
• Coffee from £1.50, sandwiches £3.20, cakes £1.90-£2.60. 14 Commercial Street, 01423 508200, beanandbud.co.uk

Palm Court Cafe

Above Farrah's chocolatier and gift store – which itself sells sandwiches, from £1.99, and Voakes's award-winning pies – this is a rather old-fashioned cafe in both good ways (home-cooked food prepared with decent local ingredients) and bad (rather drab, grannyish decor). A dish of rich Lyonnaise potatoes, proper sausages and sweet beetroot and carrot salad was every bit as tasty as it sounds. Yes, admittedly, after being reheated, those sausages had taken on a distinctive ever-so-slightly mushy texture, but, at this price-point, in a limited kitchen, that goes with the territory. Flavour is more important than finicky detail, and Palm Court is making the best of itself, across a menu that teems with things you would gladly eat: Yorkshire ale rarebit; homemade chilli; curried sweet potato soup; ploughman platters. Moreover, it is doing so at prices which, by local standards, are a pound or so cheaper than the norm. There's a 20% takeaway discount, too.
• Meals £3.45-£6.25. 29 Montpellier Parade, 01423 566220, palmcourtcafeharrogate.co.uk

Cupcakes by Charley

In Harrogate, there are numerous traditional venues offering afternoon tea. If you are looking for something more modern, minus the doilies, this Montpellier Quarter cafe, complete with its shocking pink furniture, Burt Bacharach soundtrack and fantastical cupcakes, should suffice. To metropolitan baking hipsters, the cupcake may be very much last year's thing, but, even at this unfashionably late hour, the eponymous Charlotte Mitchell's creations are a reminder of just how good the cupcake can be. Not only do her pretend lemon meringue pies and sham vanilla sundaes (complete with chocolate flake) look fantastic, but they taste remarkably of what they should, with none of the sickliness or artificiality that often dogs cupcakes. Her sticky toffee pudding creation, particularly, is in a light, beautifully crafted class apart.

• Cupcakes £1.95. 5a Royal Parade, 01423 524330, cupcakesbycharley.co.uk

Sasso

It is an illustration of how Britain is tightening its collective belt that, even in well-to-do Harrogate, a restaurant of Sasso's reputation needs to discount. The upside, for the budget traveller, is that you can eat two courses for £8.95 (at lunch and before 7pm Mon-Fri) at this Good Food Guide and Michelin-listed Italian. Good complimentary tapenade and somewhat pappy bread, was followed by a discus-sized Milanese fish cake, served with an interesting, zippily dressed mixed salad and a creamy, nicely calibrated horseradish sauce. The cake was well-seasoned and accurately cooked, the filling fairly generous. All in all, it was a very pleasant plate of food. The only sour note was having to listen to a bloke at the next table, one of several middle-aged, lunchtime bargain hunters, explain how public sector waste is strangling the UK economy.
• Before 7pm, two courses, £8.95. 8-10 Princes Square, 01423 508838, sassorestaurant.co.uk

Quantro Restaurant

Midweek lunchtime and this slightly dated modern restaurant – clean lines, abstract art, curious plum 'n' pale green colour scheme – was packed. Its very competitively priced lunchtime menu clearly has a loyal local following. It's not hard to see why. Service is efficient and super-friendly, little touches (water comes with ice 'n' lemon in an attractive blue pottery jug) set it apart, and the kitchen is sending out reasonably sharp versions of crowd-pleasing international classics such as stroganoff, salmon pasta in dill and watercress sauce, Caesar salad, and stir-fried chicken noodles with hoi sin vegetables. A chunky fish broth was a big bowlful which, while not making any pretence to bouillabaisse levels of sophistication – the broth's predominant flavour was tomato and garlic, not fish – was hearty, flavourful and packed with lightly fried gnocchi and sizable hunks of salmon, white fish and, slightly dry, tuna. Likewise, the rouille was a rather route-one blended paste, but tasty. For £6, who's complaining?
• Lunchtime set menu, two courses, £8, three, £10. Light lunch meals £6-£8. 3 Royal Parade, 01423 503034, quantro.co.uk

Mirabelle

Another lunchtime bargain and, arguably, the pick of the bunch. Good in their different ways as Sasso and Quantro were, the experience at chef-owner Lionel Strub's French restaurant is, in all respects, a step up. With its understated pale blue and off-white colour scheme and its decorative ironwork sculptures, the space itself is classy. The service is also easygoing, chatty and on the ball, in a way that is all too rare. The food was of a piece with this. An accurately cooked sea bass fillet arrived on a generous portion of vibrant, saline samphire with a beurre blanc that had a pleasing vinegary twang. This came with a good side of vegetables (carrots slightly overcooked, the only misstep), as well as free filtered water and a little complimentary appetiser of good beetroot and walnut bread. If one of the aims of a discounted lunch menu is to tempt you back to pay full price at night, Mirabelle's was certainly the most persuasive.
• Lunch, one course £8.95, two £11.95. 28a Swan Road, 01423 565551, mirabellerestaurant.co.uk

Fat Badger

Attached to the slick White Hart Hotel, the Badger has been given a rather OTT makeover. With its taxidermy, oil paintings, Chesterfield sofas, faux-flickering gas lamps and handsome dark wood fixtures, it looks how big old Victorian pubs might had Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen been alive at the time. The food, however – and the Fat Badger is particularly useful in that you can eat here all day – will quiet any misgivings about the decor. There are sharing platters, upmarket sandwiches and pasta dishes, plus a handful of mains, such as fish and chips, Niçoise salad and Asian baby back ribs with fries, priced at just under a tenner. The lunch deal (two courses for two, £18.95), where you can choose between the likes of haddock in a butter and caper sauce with bubble and squeak, or Cumberland sausage and mash with onion marmalade, looks good value. Judging by a sample bowl of mushroom soup – big-hitting flavours, a nice sour cream edge, dressed with a seriously pungent truffle oil – the kitchen is cooking with enough rigour and skill to pull off the above with aplomb. A pint of Blonde Witch (£3.30), one of six real ales, was in okay if not sparkling form.
• Snacks, sandwiches and sharing platters, £4.95-£10.95, mains £7.95-£11.95. Coldbath Road, 01423 505681, thefatbadger.co.uk

Graveley's

Chatting as my meal is cooked, the guy behind the counter tells me he has spent so long in fish 'n' chip shops, he can now tell what brand of oil a chippy is using, just by sniffing the air. That is the kind of knowledge you want in a chip shop. This being Yorkshire of course, Graveley's uses beef dripping. A good quality one too, I'd guess, given that my haddock and chips was perhaps most notable for the savoury unctuousness, that ineffable lip-smacking background beefiness, which echoed through both the chips and fish. The former had a decent crunch, if not a shattering glassiness, while the batter was thin enough, if not quite of the tempura-like lightness it can be. The mushy peas (90p) were bright and fresh and a reminder of what a warming, soul-stirring treat they can be when made properly. Graveley's chip shop is attached to a more elaborate restaurant, and so it also offers relatively exotic items, such as smoked mackerel paté, prawn cocktail and Whitby wholetail scampi, to take away.
• Lunch, haddock and chips, from £3.25, evenings from £4.70. 8-12 Cheltenham Parade, 01423 507093, graveleysofharrogate.com

The Blue Nile

Tucked away upstairs at the Blues Bar, Hani Zayed's one-man operation serves homely Egyptian food at very keen prices. Don't expect anything flash. Zayed's done what he can with the room – rich scents, a few rugs and trinkets, and ambient north African music help set the mood – but it's all pretty make do and mend. There are Carlsberg beer mats and paper napkins on the tables, the chairs don't match and old blues icons are still immortalised in murals on the walls. The food, likewise, is all about flavour rather than fussy presentation. From a menu that includes familiar eastern Mediterranean staples, such as baba ganoush, ful medames and shish kebabs, I enjoyed an intriguing stew of (slightly gristly) lamb in a heady gravy, full of fragrant diverging herb and spice flavours, the sauce at times almost sour, at others almost perfumed. It was served plainly, with rice, like a curry. Not the place to take a fussy eater, then, but a find if you fancy a bit of unexpected adventure in Harrogate.
• Starters £4-£5.75, mains £6-£8. Upstairs at the Blues Bar, 4 Montpellier Parade, 0779 122 8256, bluesbar.co.uk

Tony travelled from Manchester to Harrogate with Northern Rail (northernrail.org). For more information on Harrogate, visit yorkshire.com

• Britain's best budget restaurants - read more of Tony's reviews