The MagpieCafé

The black-and-white house on Pier Road went up around 1750 for a merchant family tied to Whitby's whaling Scoresbys, became a café in the late 1930s, and entered its defining era in 1954 with Clifford and Gladys Barker; their granddaughter Alison McKenzie Slater has run it since 1990 with Ian Robson, and the queue down the harbour railing is now as much a fixture of the view as the abbey. The fish comes off the grounds the window overlooks, the menu runs far deeper than the fryer — crab, lobster, the day's landings — and the company's filings are current to 2025, which for an institution this photographed is the least interesting true thing about it.