Review | Tea for you and me

May 6, 2017
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My first cruffin

Today I had my first cruffin. I’m a bit late to this trend as they’ve been around for a few years, but at least I’m all caught up now. I think this is the first portmanteau item I’ve tried (I’m discounting brunch as that’s not one particular thing).

Today’s cruffin came from The Cookie Jar and was a chocolate cruffin. Here are some photos for your delectation.

The chocolate cruffin at Cookie Jar.

The inside of the chocolate cruffin.

The cruffin was heavier than I expected and quite filling (which I appreciated as I was hungry). My cruffin-eating companions shared one between two, I think they were already aware of the filling nature of the cruffin.

Overall, it was an enjoyable experience, and kudos to the Cookie Jar for going to the trouble of making them (apparently it takes three days and so they only sell them on a Saturday), but I’m afraid I would still choose a croissant or a muffin over a cruffin. Sorry cruffin.

April 21, 2017
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My new top five

I have to admit I’ve been a bit slack with updating my top five cafes, but a few days ago I have updated the list to show my current top five places to drink rooibos tea.

Tea and cake at The teashop by the canal

For a long time, my top five has displayed as:

This list is out of date for two reasons. Firstly, it was made before I started drinking rooibos tea, and secondly, two of the cafes have now closed. Sadly, Sweet Tooth Cupcakery and Delicious… are no more.

One of the reasons I haven’t updated the list before now is that it’s so hard to choose. Especially when my favourite places change depending on what I’m looking for from my tea. Do I want somewhere convenient? Somewhere that’s good to write? Somewhere that’s good for meeting friends? I also don’t travel as much as I used to and tend to revisit the same places more often than before.

My new top five are:

Here’s a little explainer as to why they made the top five (please imagine the kind of chirpy music that you get with a music video countdown).

Pot of rooibos tea and the marvellous chocolate brownie in Nibsy’s.

Nibsy’s It’s got rooibos tea in a pot and excellent cake with very friendly staff, as well as a mix of normal tables and chairs and low tables and armchairs. It also has a toilet, which can be crucial if you’re drinking lots of tea.

Siblings Home Loose leaf rooibos in a pot, good food and a lovely environment. And a toilet. I especially like that it’s got lots of plants.

Picnic Rooibos tea in a cup (but it always comes with a little caramelised biscuit). Great soup with generous amounts of bread, brunch at the weekends, salads and cake.

Reefside Kiosk The photos in my review don’t do the views from the pier justice. It was very calming and a cup of hot tea when we’d been walking was just what was needed. Plus it sells ice cream.

North Tea Power The only place I’ve ever been to that sells tea latte. Genius.

Don’t forget, if you have any other suggestions of places to try, let me know and I’ll add them to the wish list.

April 16, 2017
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The Look Out Cafe Bar

World of Boats, Heol Porth Teigr, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, CF10 4GA.

View of Cardiff Bay from our table at The Look Out Cafe Bar.

I have to admit we weren’t planning on going here, we just got a bit confused about the bus route round the bay and ended up getting off next to World of Boats. World of Boats is in a lovely position next to the bay (as befits an exhibition about boats) and the cafe has beautiful views across the water.

The Look Out Cafe Bar had dotty tablecloths, floral arrangements, a little dog pottering around and tea that came in a teapot. It was nice. R and I enjoyed a nice chat and some tea drinking and decided that although we hadn’t planned to, we would have a look round World of Boats.

My pot of decaf tea and R’s glass of peppermint tea at The Look Out Cafe Bar.

Things were all going swimmingly, until the little dog (small and white with fetching brown patches) pottered over to the table next to us, cocked a leg, and peed on the floor. Once we told the staff it was all cleaned up very promptly, but we didn’t stay in the cafe for very long after that.

Instead, we paid our £5 each and went through into the exhibition space. World of Boats was not, as I had thought, a euphemism for a lot of boats. It was a small exhibition of boats from around the world (which is what R thought it would be). And very interesting and enjoyable it was too. There was even a section where you could try out semaphore.

Teapot? Yes, for the decaf tea.
Leaf tea? No, tea bag tea.
Milk jug? Yes.
Price? £2.25 for each tea and £5 each to go into World of Boats.
Cake? Yes and I think they had savoury food too.
Go again? Unfortunately not.

Visited on: Monday 27th March 2017

March 28, 2017
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Wally’s Kaffehaus

Wally’s Delicatessen, 38-46 Royal Arcade, Cardiff, Wales, CF10 1AE.

Visited on: Sunday 26th March 2017

Tea and teapots at Wally’s Kaffehaus (I was trying to illustrate the different sizes of pots, but apparently I’ve failed miserably as the perspective makes them seem roughly the same size).

R and I were visiting Cardiff and wanted somewhere to go for a nice cafe lunch. We came across Wally’s Kaffehaus in one of the arcades and decided to give it a try. Well, to be fair, we came across Wally’s Delicatessen and I saw the sign in the window for the Kaffehaus upstairs and we looked at the menu and decided to try it.

It only occurs to me now that once again I picked somewhere with coffee in the name, but luckily Wally’s Kaffehaus bucked the trend and also served good tea.

I had a most marvellous rooibos tea and R had Japanese Sencha. He even ordered a large pot (that the waiter said was big enough for two) because he really wanted a lot of peppermint tea. The tea was loose leaf and rather nice. I hadn’t read the menu properly and asked for milk with mine, only to find that it was delicately spiced and fruity and didn’t need milk. Most refreshing.

My Styria open sandwich (so much ham!).

R’s sausage platter.

The food was really good. Wally’s Kaffehaus is a Viennese Kaffehaus and has lots of Austrian food. R had a sausage mixed platter (three different sausages with mustard, curry ketchup and rye bread) and I had a Styria open sandwich with the most ham in one sandwich I have ever had. It also came with cheese, pickles and mustard on rye bread and a side of delicious potato salad (all the more impressive as I don’t particularly like potato salad).

A most satisfying lunch and tea experience, with the added bonus of looking out onto the arcade of shops below. Worth a visit if you’re ever in Cardiff.

Teapot? Yes.
Leaf tea? Loose leaf tea and a teapot shaped saucer thing to put your infuser basket on once the tea was the desired strength.
Milk jug? Yes (not that I needed it).
Price? £2.10 for my small pot of tea, £3.50 for the big one, £5.95 for the sausage platter and £6.75 for the sandwich.
Cake? Yes and sandwiches and hot food and nice looking biscuits. I really wanted some cake, but that sandwich was quite filling.
Go again? Yes, I had serious food jealousy the whole time we were there and now I want to go back try everything else on the menu (including the cake).

November 20, 2016
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Zooby’s

Units 4 & 5, Winter Garden, Surrey Street, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S1 1LH.

Visited on: Saturday 12th November 2016

The view from our table, looking up into the plants and the arched glass roof.

The Winter Garden in Sheffield is an indoor garden, housed inside a huge arched glasshouse. It’s a nice place to be and, obviously, an even better place to be if there’s tea. Zooby’s is a cafe inside the Winter Garden, with some chairs and tables next to some of the planting.

After the disappointment of Manchester cafes not wanting to sell me rooibos (hibiscus being the ‘in’ thing), it was a welcome surprise to see that Zooby’s not only sold rooibos, it was listed on the menu as a separate category (instead of being lumped in with ‘selection of herbal teas’). I ordered a large cup for the very reasonable price of £1.70.

My large rooibos tea at Zooby’s.

Teapot? No.
Leaf tea? No, but a very nice Clipper teabag.
Milk jug? No, but they added milk for you so none of those tiny plastic pots. Though the cups were takeaway cups (understandable in a garden cafe) and I unfortunately I didn’t have my re-usable cup with me.
Price? £1.70 for a large cup of rooibos tea, £1.60 for a large filter coffee and the bargain price of £1 for a small tea or small filter coffee.
Cake? Yes and flapjacks, crips and sandwiches.
Go again? Yes, it’s a lovely setting. Next time I’ll try and bring my re-usable cup.

October 28, 2016
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Sourced Market, Marylebone

68-72 Wigmore Street, London, W1U 2SD.

Visited on: 24th October 2016.

Rooibos tea in a pot at Sourced Market, with milk in a bottle and a glass of water. Apologies for forgetting to take a photo of the tea once it was poured out.

Oxford Street can be very busy, but if you go through the tiny gap into St Christopher’s Place and out the other side, you come to Sourced Market.

Sourced Market has two locations: St Pancras International and Marylebone. The Marylebone location is a two storey cafe and bar, which also has some expensive but lovely looking food and drink for sale. There’s seating upstairs and downstairs and though it looked busy from the outside, there were lots of spaces once you were inside. The upstairs has a cafe counter, a sandwich and deli counter, a juice bar and a hot food counter. Downstairs is the bar.

Decaf Americano with hot milk on the side (in the trendy milk bottle) and a little glass of water.

I ordered at the cafe counter, but the drinks were brought over to us at our table. The little wooden boards worked well in such a busy place and I liked that everything came with a glass of water. Definitely somewhere I’ll come again when I’m next in this part of London.

Teapot? Yes.
Leaf tea? No, but rather tasty Brew Tea Co. rooibos teabags (there were two in my pot).
Milk jug? The oh-so-fashionable miniature milk bottle.
Price? £4.10 for a decaf Americano and a pot of rooibos tea. For central London, this is very good value.
Cake? Yes, and pastries. Also sandwiches and hot food.
Go again? Yes, it was a great place to escape Oxford Street and the rooibos was very smooth.

October 20, 2016
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Tipsy bean

18 Prospect Street, Caversham, Reading, Berkshire, RG4 8JB.

Tipsy bean (great name) is a cafe/bar in Caversham, where the old Wordplay bookshop and toy shop used to be. It’s a long space with the bar along one side towards the back. The windows onto the street give light to the tables at the front, while the area near the bar is quite dark, but it feels nice and cosy rather than oppressive. The seating matches the change in light – with upholstered grey/cream chairs near the window and a long red leather bench opposite the bar. With dried flower bunches hanging above the bar, red Gerberas on the tables and jam jar style lamps, Tipsy bean has a welcoming feel.

The menu said that they had lots of tea and they certainly seem to – they had rooibos at least and quite a few other varieties (all in boxes on a high shelf at the back of the bar). I wanted to sample their cake, but unfortunately they’d run out.

My tea came in a mug, with a milk jug and a little plate with a sugar. It was a good mug of tea and I enjoyed my visit.

Teapot? No.
Leaf tea? No, but Waitrose rooibos teabags, which I’m quite partial to (Tick Tock and Clipper are my other favourites, just so you know).
Milk jug? Yes.
Price? £2.
Cake? No (sob). But platters (smoked salmon, veggie, meat) and sandwiches and breakfast and nuts and nibbles.
Go again? Yes, both because I liked it and because I’d like to try the cake and the veggie platter.

September 11, 2016
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Ancoats Coffee Co.

Unit 9, Royal Mills, 17 Redhill Street, Ancoats, M4 5BA

Visited on: 27th August 2016

The inside/outside area at Ancoats Coffee Co.

I know, I know, going to drink tea somewhere that calls itself a coffee company is bound to end in trouble, but I was with people who wanted to drink coffee. And that’s fine, I used to drink coffee too (just not as much as I drank tea). Plus, the whole reason we were in Ancoats in the first place was that H had mentioned how good the pizza was at Rudy’s Pizza was and I wanted to try it (it was very, very good).

H had heard about Ancoats Coffee Co. and how it had good coffee. So off we went. It’s in a converted mill, with seating inside and seating inside/outside – outside the coffee shop but underneath a glass roof, in what would have been a courtyard in the mill.

The cappuccinos and the biscuits.

We ordered our drinks: H had a decaf cappuccino (and wasn’t impressed when they charged an extra 50p for decaf without that being obviously listed on the menu or being warned about it first) and E had a normal cappuccino. I tried to have rooibos, but I think now rooibos tea has become so mainstream that Tetley sell it, it’s too mainstream for hipster Manchester – I couldn’t get rooibos in any of the places we went in during this visit. I ended up having red berry and hibiscus on the advice of the guy who served us. We also had two lavender and lemon biscuits – one for me and one for E and H to share.

The biscuit was delicious, sweet and light and with a lovely lemon icing. E and H said that their coffee was very good. My tea was, well, not really my cup of tea. It came in a tea pot, so that was good, but it also came with an empty carafe and a wine glass with honey on the inside. I don’t take sugar with my tea and wouldn’t have ordered a biscuit if I’d known that the tea would come with honey. Anyway, I tried it as it was. I quite like the idea of having the carafe to pour the tea into once the tea is strong enough, but the tea itself was quite bitter. You needed the honey to offset the bitterness. The issue with having the honey in the glass is that the first glass of tea is very sweet and the last glass of tea is not sweet at all. I didn’t finish it. It’s my own fault really, I know I don’t particularly like red berry style fruit teas, but I wanted a cup of tea.

Tea in the carafe, honey in the glass.

Tea in the glass and so the honey is in the tea too.

Overall verdict? We liked the space and E and H liked their coffee, but we would have liked a little more information before ordering. I would have liked to know the tea would come with honey and H would have liked to know that having decaf coffee would be an extra 50p (H would have had a normal coffee if that had been explained).

Teapot? Yes, and a carafe too. First time I’ve ever been given both.
Leaf tea? Yes. Well, I suppose technically it wasn’t tea, but it was a loose infusion.
Milk jug? No milk with this beverage.
Price? £2.70 for the infusion/tea, £1.50 for the biscuit and £3.20 for the coffee (I think, not too sure of the coffee price as I wasn’t drinking it).
Cake? Yes and brownies and biscuits.
Go again? No. Not unless I was with people who really wanted coffee.

July 21, 2016
by tealeaves 1 Comment

Reefside Kiosk

Boscombe Pier, Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH5 1BN.

Visited on: 31st May 2016

Dorset Tea from the Reefside Kiosk, Boscombe Pier.

R and I walked from Bournemouth seafront to Boscombe Pier in the rain. It wasn’t particularly cold rain, but it was more than just drizzle and so by the time we arrived at the pier we were both in need of a cup of tea.

Ice cream with a flake, sea in the background.

Ice cream! With a flake! Next to the sea!

Reefside Kiosk is a kiosk at the entrance to Boscombe Pier. The kiosk had black tea, green tea or fruit tea, but unfortunately no rooibos or decaf. R was happy as he’s a fan of green tea and had a cup of that. I’m not a fan of fruit tea (it makes my teeth feel funny) and green tea has caffeine in. Reader, I wanted a cup of tea badly. I ordered the black tea. Then I moved across to the Reefside Ices window and ordered an ice cream (because we were at the seaside).

The tea came in a paper cup and was a Dorset Tea teabag. The milk came in little plastic pots. There was a wooden stick instead of a spoon. But wow, did that cup of tea taste good. Was it the fact it was caffeinated? Was it that it was a brand local to where we were? Was it that I drank it sat on a bench watching the rain fall on the sea but stayed dry as the benches on the pier are covered by a roof? Probably it was all of those things.

The ice cream helped too. My ice cream was Purbeck ice cream and I had a two scoops cone: one of honeycomb hash and one of chocolate. With a chocolate flake. It was very good.

Boscombe Pier, unlike Bournemouth Pier, is free to walk on and has no amusement arcades. When we were there they were installing mini golf (though this seemed a risky entertainment for a pier – how many golf balls were going to go in the sea?). There were also musical instruments that you could play and I had a go on all of them. They made lovely chiming noises.

The view from our bench.

We didn’t go further than the pier, but Boscombe seemed much quieter than Bournemouth. It was very peaceful sitting on the pier and looking out over the sea, listening to the waves and watching the birds. The setting makes this one of my favourite places to drink tea so far. Thanks to the lady in Bournemouth’s tourist information office for suggesting that we walked down to Boscombe pier.

The view of the Reefside Kiosk from the road. I took this after we’d eaten, notice that the ices section has now closed for the day.

Teapot? No.
Leaf tea? No, but it was a Dorset Tea teabag and we were in Dorset.
Milk jug? No, little plastic pots.
Price? £1.60 for a cup of tea. £3.60 for two scoop ice cream and an extra 30p for the flake (worth every penny).
Cake? No, but there were sweet crêpes, which looked amazing. Sadly I was too full to try one when we were there.
Go again? Yes.

January 10, 2016
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Le Valentin

30-32 Passage Jouffroy, 75009, Paris, France

Visited on: Thursday 22nd October 2015

A view of the cake counter at Le Valentin.

Another Lonely Planet recommendation, I’d been looking forward to going to a proper French patisserie the whole time we’d been in Paris. Le Valentin, which is situated in a covered shopping arcade, did not disappoint.

Chocolate eclair, chocolate cake, fancy sugar sticks and pots of tea.

The waitress seated us and then came to take our order. R only wanted tea, but the waitress and I managed to persuade him to try a chocolate eclair as well. I asked for something that was chocolate and the waitress pointed out a particular cake in the cabinet. It had a special name, but I’m afraid I couldn’t quite catch it.

The tea was loose leaf and came in metal teapots. R had chosen a sencha green tea and I had chosen rooibos, neither came with milk and I didn’t ask for milk as I felt I should try it without. In the end, that turned out to be a good idea as the cake was very rich and the tea was more refreshing without milk.

My glowing rooibos tea.

Each of us were served a fancy sugar stick with the tea – a wooden stick with crystallised sugar on it. Neither of us take sugar with our tea but as they were so fancy I folded a napkin around them and took them home with me to give to someone who did take sugar in their tea. R found this highly amusing.

R’s chocolate eclair was light and not too heavy on the cream. My chocolate thing was rich but not cloying and I especially appreciated the little piece of silver on the top of it. The tea was good too.

My chocolate cake thing in all its shiny glory.

The cake and mousse interior of my chocolate cake thing.

We were sat next to the cake counter, so could see what everyone else was ordering and I enjoyed watching everyone come and go. Good tea, great cake and a nice experience overall.

Teapot? Yes.
Leaf tea? Yes. Not only that, there was a very wide choice of tea on their tea menu.
Milk jug? No, but neither needed milk.
Price? €5.10 for the rooibos tea, €5.50 (I think) for R’s sencha tea, €4.40 for the eclair (eat in price) and around €6 for the chocolate deliciousness that I had (eat in price).
Cake? Yes! And lots of it. Plus pastries, breads, savoury tarts and pies.
Go again? Yes.

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