A COUPLE of weeks ago we welcomed The Purple Carrot to town. Yup, you heard right, Malton’s newest opening is a vegan and vegetarian deli in a charming building at 10 Market Street.

Malton has officially embraced the future of healthy eating and, after seeing all the multi-coloured delectable treats inside, I can confirm - the future is indeed purple.

This brand new deli is the creation of the delightful Polish couple Kate and Rafal Zaleski from York.

Having experimented with running a café on a barge on the River Ouse and attending London’s trendy Brick Lane market, they settled on Malton (and why not!)

Originally trading at the monthly food market with a stall named “A Mind For Cooking” their brand of brightly coloured, healthy and delicious food quickly became popular and found a keen following.

Kate points out that to begin with there was a little scepticism from some of the public with questions like, “Why is it so colourful?” and “if it doesn’t have meat I can’t eat it”, but quickly any doubters were won over.

Now they have jumped from a market stall to a full-time bricks and mortar deli and what a beautiful shop it is.

It is becoming a trend in Malton, indeed this journey (from stall to shop) has also been made by Costellos Bakery and Florian Poirot, who both started on Malton’s monthly food market. But back to The Purple Carrot - what’s it like?

First of all there’s great friendliness when you enter and a feeling that whatever you order it is going to be drop dead delicious.

I love their brick wall that has been painted subtly with two different colours of blue and green creating a wonderful texture.

With seating upstairs and a lovely open kitchen at the back it is, as it says on the tin, “authentic and delicious”.

And what to eat? Kate’s flavours are influenced by her travels across the globe; the vegetable samosas (inspired by a trip to India) are popular, as are the Moroccan filo pies with sweet potato, chickpeas and sweet spices. The Middle East inspired spinach and feta borek also has lentils and dill in it.

This reporter tried it with a carrot and orange soup and can confirm that both are sublime.

One more stand-out dish is the colourful beetroot, squash and oregano quiche, which is already the talk of the town.

And we’ve not even got to the sweet things yet. The counter at The Purple Carrot was overflowing with apple and mixed berry slices (one of Kate’s Polish recipes this time), vegan scones and their very naughty looking chocolate and raspberry cake.

Although I’m fascinated about the vegan aspect of the deli, Kate emphasises that it’s really just about properly tasty, healthy food and after tucking in I find it hard to disagree.

Anyway, what a place and who said Yorkshire was only about sausage rolls, please try it soon. Enjoy!

At the next Malton Monthly Food Market on Saturday, November 10, we can peruse a mighty collection of artisan producers and wonder who might follow in the footsteps of The Purple Carrot, Florian Poirot and Costellos to be the next to place down permanent roots in town.

You will see the town is busy getting ready for Christmas and we are too – this year there will be a huge two day food and gift market in December.

For more information, go to visitmalton.com