A chocolate salon, bakery and ice cream store, Harris & James opens in Southwold tomorrow

A delicious new bakery, chocolate and ice cream store is set to open in Southwold tomorrow.

Harris & James comes to the town from Richard and Mandy Godfrey and their son Alex who run Twyfords in Beccles, which is known for its amazing cakes – and more recently bean to bar chocolate and ethically-sourced coffee.

The latest venture in Southwold boasts a counter brimming with pastries, vienoisserie and cakes baked at Twyfords and delivered daily to the town, proper Italian-style gelato made with Marybelle cream, and takeaway treats.

Harris & James is found in the old Nutters Deli building, and is under the management of Daniel Smith, who is excited about bringing something new to the town.

'Our ice cream is wonderful. Flavours we're rather partial to include tiramisu, made by soaking our own Victoria sponge in our own coffee, and chocolate ice cream made with our own chocolate! It's absolutely beautiful, intense and silky.'

In the cake counter expect specialities such as raspberry ripple cake with ripple sauce all the way through, and what is meant to be an 'amazing' chocolate cake with ganache through the middle and gold sprinkled over the top.

'We'll have our own croissants and pain au chocolat in the morning, and salads and ciabattas and more to takeaway. We've also got a chocolate salon at the top of the shop. We've developed all our own handmade chocolates and customers can come in and choose their selection which we'll package beautifully for them. There are chocolate drops with Turkish delight, coffee ganaches, malted white chocolate.'

If that isn't enough to get the mouths of chocoholics watering, the shop is thinking about introducing a very very special loyalty scheme whereby you collect points on a loyalty card which translates into grams of chocolate to redeem later on.

'We are also really proud to be eco conscious,' adds Daniel. 'The packaging levels are very low as everything is delivered here direct on the baking trays using an electric van! We're hoping that makes our carbon footprint as low as it can be.'