Yemi Adelekan is a food writer and blogger who was a semi-finalist in the 2022 series of BBC TV’s Masterchef competition.

Yemi writes for the Stray Ferret about her love of the area’s food and shares cooking tips.

A recent Sunday lunch at the Thai Orchid in Harrogate reminded me of the Thai flavours that I love and adore. These flavours are a perfect blend of sweet, sour, salty and umami flavours with aromatics of ginger, galangal, lime leaves and lemongrass.

When we first moved to Harrogate over a decade ago, some friends took us to the Thai Orchid restaurant, and it very quickly became a favourite place to eat as a family, with their Sunday buffet quite popular. I’m not quite sure what happened, but we stopped going after a while, and it was several years before I thought of the Thai Orchid again.

I looked over the menu and saw some old favourites and some new ones too so for starters we ordered the bang bang chicken, which is both creamy and crunchy with the flavour of peanuts. The side dish, comprising shredded chicken generously coated with peanut sauce, was topped with crispy potato shreds and garnished with chopped spring onions.

I loved this dish before and enjoyed tasting it this time around, but what I ordered for myself was the lamb pancake with marinated slow-cooked lamb with five spices, finely sliced leeks, cucumber, peppers with a yellow bean and honey dip. The portion size was generous enough to share, and the dish was delicious enough for me to re-order it as my main dish, but I resisted the urge to do that.

For mains, I ordered the Plaa Neung Ma Now, a sea bass poached with bird's eye chilli, lemon juice and spring onions. It looked beautiful, had the right amount of heat and the fish was soft and delicately poached. I went for the seafood Panang curry, a popular dish from Thailand comprising stir-fried tiger prawns, scallops, squid, coconut cream, lime leaves and Thai herbs.

The perfect accompaniment to absorb the delicious curry sauce was the coconut rice, and a portion of the Young Chow fried rice with roasted pork, prawns, peas and spring onions was what the doctor ordered.

The dessert menu was simple but appealing, with some expected favourites. It was easy to choose the coconut crème brûlée and the mango panna cotta. Coconut is one of my all-time favourite flavours, in dishes from coconut ice cream to toasted coconut in sambals. The crème brûlée was stunning to look at and beautiful to eat. I am not a fan of mango, but the feedback was that it was just as good.

For drinks, we had the jasmine green tea served with honey and lemon. It came in beautiful teapots, and I enjoyed my very own tea service with my meal.

As we left the restaurants, we ran into some friends who were interested in my recommendations, and that was easy enough to do because all the dishes I had were good. I left reminded of the many family Sunday lunches at the Thai Orchid and I would recommend it as a family hang-out.

Was I blown away by the entire experience? The jury is out on that. Did I enjoy it enough to go back? Yes, I did. Both the starter and desserts were stand-out dishes and I can’t wait to go back for them. Later in the week, I found myself making a prawn and scallop curry inspired by the Sunday lunch experience; a gentle reminder of how much I had missed the restaurant and its flavours.