the landing, west wittering

on a sunny saturday afternoon, we found ourselves eastwards in the w sussex village of west wittering, and lo a new cafe had opened since our last visit, and it was a good cafe. simple but quirky decor, decent looking baguettes, smoothies and coffee were on offer. a selection of products, a bit deli were available to buy – some predictable, some like the environment, a bit quirkier. worth a trip back.

food ***
coffee ***
view ***
service ***
lady grey with soya

hamiltons, weymouth

once in a while my work takes me westwards to weymouth. it’s a total delight if the schedule conspires to offer an opportunity to pop into Hamiltons, and rather splendidly, last week’s trip did just that. Hamiltons was introduced to me by an ex colleague who thought the food was ace. to be honest i haven’t actually had much more than a coffee or a soup so i can’t comment that much in that area, other than to say the soup i had last week was lovely.

hamiltons feels like it’s probably been there for ages, it’s part of weymouth’s seaside heritage, sat on a quiet road running alongside the promenade. a small number of tables outside, offer views of the wonderful jurassic coast and of course the sea. sadly parked cars (including mine), rather get in the way of the view, but the upside is it’s very convenient. service is friendly. the whole place feels like a bit of a find, not in a trendy way, but in an authentic way. it really is worth a visit.

coffee *****
view *****
service *****
food ****
lady grey and soya no

ginger two, winchester

weekends are increasingly spent driving around the region taking children to various places for sporting engagement. often all we see is the interior of a pool and if very lucky accompanying coffee machine. last weekend was a bit different. winchester college was our destination, happily sitated a few mins walk from the centre of this rather attractive city.

a friend recommended that we try ginger two, so we obliged. to be fair, our timing was hardly good, 2ish on a saturday afternoon, so perhaps unsurprisingly a queue was already formed to get to a table. ‘it should take about ten mins to get a table for two’ was the pleasant waitress’s advice, so given the recommendation, we decided to stick with it.

twenty mins later everyone was resolutely pinned to their chairs, we’d invested some time in the queue and so felt it would be a waste to go. fifteen further mins we were finally rewarded with a small table, a pleasant victoria sponge and a not very impressive coffee.

the trade off hadn’t been worth it. so first piece of advice, don’t go along at peak times, and second, don’t bother with the queue, go and find somewhere else. HOWEVER, the food was beautifully presented, the waitresses were really friendly (one of the reasons we stuck with the queueing was that they were constantly communicating with us and nicely apologising for the wait).

we’ll try again, earlier or later in the day, but quite honestly, the fact that we would is in some ways an inditement of the paucity of nice cafes in a very upmarket city.

food ****
service *****
view **
coffee **
lady grey with soya damn didn’t ask, but i suspect they might have

deli rocks, southbourne, bournemouth

for how many years did southbourne have no decent cafes (see larderhouse review)? and now it has two. and this one is REALLY good. deli rocks is a deli with coffee and what i’m told is the most wonderful thick hot chocolate. service is friendly, food fab and the atmosphere is lively and rather lovely.

what i really like about deli rocks, is that it doesn’t even have a sign with its name on outside. they’re waiting for it to arrive, but i love the fact that in this branded world which we inhabit, there’s a great cafe which doesn’t even whisper its name. it will of course, when the sign arrives 🙂

in a town in which decent cafes can be difficult to find, deli rocks is a real find.

coffee *****
food ****
service ****
view *
lady grey with soya no

beach hut, watergate bay, cornwall

as you’ve guessed, we were in cornwall for part of half term. we’d been to the beach hut at watergate bay a couple of times before and to be honest, weren’t that impressed. this time, things were different. perhaps its the fact that we weren’t there at the height of the season (tho it did get busy on the saturday), but this time the beach hut proved to be well worth a mention.

the beach hut sits underneath fifteen (see earlier post), and i guess is therefore the more humble cousin. of course the views are absolutely wonderful – watergate bay’s long stretch of sand and lines of crashing surf. so provided you could actually get a table (the problem with the busy summer is this is pretty difficult), it’s going to be good.

we had coffees and dinner there, and actually it was the dinner we were most impressed with. quieter, very friendly, really flexible with my tricky vegan needs, it was just great. food isn’t amazing, but is good and certainly is what it promises to be, so you can’t complain.

coffee ****
view *****
service ****
food ***
lady grey with soya no

blue tomato cafe, rock, cornwall

have you been to rock? it’s real pretty, with great views across the camel estuary towards padstow. ferries nip across the water between two of cornwall’s more upmarket destinations. all very pleasant, except perhaps for the other punters who largely clad in hunter wellies and jack wills tops, travel around in huge 4×4 bmws. oh they’re alright, it’s just that they’re a touch pretentious. indeed we did decide that southerners do pretentious far better than northerners do: rock beats abersoch on these stakes hands down*.

anyway, to the blue tomato cafe. perched by the road with a splendid view across the water, it’s the obvious place to have a coffee. the service is friendly, the decor fine, the food not bad, but i do think it’s the most expensive cafe i’ve been to, with soup coming in at a whopping £7! london prices for london types i guess.

so if you’re in rock, the blue tomato cafe is a good place to go, but you might want to consider whether you want to be in rock in the first place 😉
*ignore all this, i’m only joking …..

coffee ****
service ****
food ***
view *****
lady grey with soya no

rojano’s in the square, padstow, cornwall

on an extremely wet, half-term monday in padstow, after a rather uninspiring rick stein cafe experience, things started to look up when we found rojano’s in the square. we thought we’d go for a coffee, but a quick look at the menu convinced us we should go for the grub. i always think the plainer the italien food, the more authentic and the better (we were told in trentino, italy, that the original pizzas were just tomato, garlic and olive oil , and boy are they good). anyway the food at rojano’s was very authentic and really fab – the kind of the food you can imagine yourself taking a thirty mile detour to have again next time you’re passing through cornwall.

so the food was great, but even better was the service. a great guy who was so friendly and interested. we chatted happily about man city’s 6-1 maulling of united and his thwarted 30th birthday parachute jump. he made us feel really welcome. i returned to the cottage, sat by the fire and wrote a positive comment on trip advisor specifically to thank him. and of course now rojano’s has made it to the dizzy heights of cafechitchat 😉

coffee *****
view ***
service *****
food *****
lady grey and soya no

pig, brockenhurst, new forest, hampshire

(the) pig opened up just eight weeks ago. i guess you’d call it contemporary country house underpinned by locally sourced food. sound good? well i have to say we just stopped for a coffee, and despite the apparent grandure of the place, we were warmly welcomed, and the waitress took great trouble to show us around and tell us the story of pig.

food is locally sourced – their menus are for example, the fifteen mile menu in which all ingredients are sourced within such a circumference of the hotel. so that sounds promising, but to be honest the veggie options weren’t plentiful despite the kitchen garden located roughly 50 metres from the building (something to work on guys). their target clientelle (if you decode the promotional material) is the 32 year old londoner, but don’t let that put you off.

can’t wait for an autumnal bike ride taking in coffee and a seat by a raging fire at the pig 🙂

coffee *****
service ****
view ***
lady grey with soya didn’t ask. will do next time.

cafe arriba, portree, skye

perched above portree’s pretty harbour sits cafe arriba, a friendly, busy, pretty-veggie cafe. clearly promoted in rough guide to uk or let’s go or some such other guide, arriba is improbably full of europeans alongside its skye regulars.

despite our passing through portree on a number of occasions, we’ve never got beyond trying cafe arriba, so whilst i expect its the best place in portree, i haven’t got much competitive intelligence to back that up 😉

coffee ****
food ***
service ****
view ****
lady grey with soya no.

macgillivary cafe, northton, harris, outer hebrides

you’ve probably guessed, we’ve just returned from harris. one place we visited which is a work in progress, but looks really promising, is the macgillivary cafe. previously the macgillivary centre, billed by the rough guide as a splendid building with nothing much inside, its transformation into a cafe is a great improvement.

ruben the guy taking it over, was busy finishing the insides of the cafe when we visited, but had already made beautiful wooden tables which complement the architecture of the building. he was happy to serve us a coffee made on a machine which had spent most of its previous week on calmac ferries making its way up to the outer hebrides. and it was great coffee. no food yet, but hopefully next time we’re there i’ll be able to report favourably on that too.

coffee *****
service ****
view *****
lady grey with soya no