Cheltenham is a lovely place to eat! Kibou & Huffkins [@NLi10]

 We had a day out in Cheltenham yesterday for the Science festival - but you don't care about that part - what did we eat?!

First up before talk one we had a coffee and a cake at the lovely Huffkins on what I think of as the main road - it leads from the festival to the high-street and has two huge bookshops on it.

It also looks very English - especially if there is drizzle.

Partner had a carrot cake, but I had a double raspberry éclair.  Decadance.

Cut open, not piped while hot so the bake-off judges would be knocking off points, but the flavours and textures would win them back around.  Not too sweet, and not too fruity.

Between talks 2 & 3 we had a two hour slot for a proper look in the bookshops (and dinner) and I chose a Japanese place we've not spotted in other years called Kibou, purely on the wonderful aromas and lovely atmosphere.

Turns out they had the beer I like most

The perfect pairing of brewed liquids. Hitachino and Kikkoman!

I had the pork mazeudon and it was awesome.  Everything was exactly how you'd want it - melting pork, firm fresh udon noodles and a good mix of veggies and seeds/flakes to add texture.  I could eat here every day and not get bored.

We didn't have space for desert but the green tea crème Brule sounded amazing so plans are already in place to return.

We sat at the bar seating which added to our salary man vibes as we ate and ran to the final talk about genetics.  Despite the lovely beer I managed to not fall asleep too.

And there are so many other little independent eateries around I think we could have done all three days of the festival only eating in 5/5 places with no repeats.

Banoffee Iced Capp (Tim Hortons) By @Cinabar

We were out at the shops on Saturday and decided to stop for a drink at Tim Hortons. It is a well known Canadian coffee chain, but still fairly new to my city. As I am not that familiar with the brand, I naturally scanned the menu for anything labelled ‘new’, while Spectre went straight for a black coffee. We definitely sit at opposite ends of the drinks menu.

I chose the Banoffee Iced Capp. I have to say, “Iced Capp” is a very cute name for their iced cappuccino, and this version comes with added banoffee flavour.

I ordered a small and it was still a generous size, topped with a mountain of cream. It looked fantastic and genuinely made me smile. From the first sip, I got a rush of sweet toffee followed by fruity banana, and that smile stayed put. The coffee flavour was slightly hidden beneath all the sweetness, but honestly, I did not care. It tasted like an indulgent banana milkshake with a toffee twist, and it was pure joy.

The little pearls on top were a lovely touch. They reminded me of tiny banana and toffee fudge pieces and added a bit of texture as well as extra sweetness.

For balance, Spectre thoroughly enjoyed his black coffee too, no milk and no sugar.

OAK Ca Phe - Purple Coffee and far too many pistachios [@NLi10]

 In between Xmas and NY there is a lull.  It's a great time to pop out to cafes and hang out with the family or the cats. And locally we have a Vietnamese cafe that  always has queues out of the door - but today - it was cold and so we could just walk right in. Perfect.

I ordered a coffee.  But it's a Ube Cream coffee so it has purple mallow foam at the top, and the white foamy stuff at the bottom too.  Not quite as strong as I was hoping for, but nicely cooling.  There were lots of other options (and cakes for another day)

I guess the winter drink menu is only around for a short while so I had to take advantage.

We both went for the avocado toast plate with all the healthy veggies and I added a poached egg.  Great for pumping up the vitamin levels after the indulgences of Christmas.

As it's a hip cafe though so there were pistachio scattered around the plate - and around the shops of Bearwood Highstreet

As seen in the supermarkets in the abundance of 'Dubai Style' products which are just previously unpopular pistachio products at inflated prices.  Wickedly nice though - we've just been eating them for years at a much cheaper price!

Ice Cream of the Gods (Hotel Chocolat) By @SpectreUK

Ice Cream of the Gods sounds a bit big headed to me. After all, what will the master of all ice cream cones Mr Whippy say?

On a recent trip to Shrewsbury we passed by a Hotel Chocolat. Cinabar wanted to try their ice cream. It was a reasonably decent summers day, so we decided to eat in.

I tried the traditional raspberry sauce on mine, whereas Cinabar chose salted caramel. There was quite a zing to the raspberry sauce, and I enjoyed the Hotel Chocolat stick in the ice cream in place of the traditional Flake.

Made with Jersey Milk and Cream, the ice cream was creamy bliss, and is the first to be infused with pure cacao nibs. I also liked the waffle cone too, and the ice cream didn't melt through the base, as it sometimes does. It was quite cool in the shop though, and it looked like rain outside, so I guess that helped too.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking, Hotel Chocolat ice cream called, Ice Cream of the Gods, would be super expensive. Actually my ice cream cost just under a regular ice cream van price at £3.45, and was gorgeous. So, next time you pass by a Hotel Chocolat on a hot day, or maybe even if it looks like rain, give it a try. It'll make you feel Divine.

Papillon Cafe - 5 Ways Birmingham [@NLi10]

 Last year when we went for our boys-day-out we started in a very much builder focused caff - and we loved it.  So this year I went to the other end of the scale to support a new business in Birmingham where they have put a posh café under one of our poshest hotels - but on one of our busiest road junctions!

Papillon is very butterfly themed and has great décor

And the usual pretty coffees 

But past the breakfast crowd is very quiet from 10am to 12 when we slotted in.

But my goodness do they have some treats.

This is not your standard stack of pancakes! Exquisite pistachio sauce and inverted ice-cream cone plus a great selection of fruit - this more than made up for the pancake day disaster I had in Leeds.  I'd go back based on just this alone - but alas it's a little too far to go just for lunch without a plan in mind.

The boys had variations on all day breakfasts and were less impressed because of the more stylish portions than the expected heap of meat and grease, but agreed that everything was superb quality and were all so full we had to delay lunch itself!

Maybe I'll make a special pre-cinema visit one day. 

It's always worth looking for new independent businesses that crop up in your area as places to take visitng friends and relatives, but this one I might just become a regular myself.

Turmeric - does it work for me? Tasty & medicinal versions. [@NLi10]

A new(ish) café has opened on our high-street (one of two highstreets we are in the middle of!)  called Hello Café (Bearwood) and my partner noticed that on the menu they had a turmeric Late.  

I have rheumatoid arthritis and turmeric is one of the many (many) things that has been recommended over the years to help - and the amounts I'd taken in teas etc really didn't make a difference.  Chatting to the lady at the counter she said this is made with powdered turmeric so I thought I'd give it a go.

It looks very pretty in it's drink form - very yellow.  Naturally I had it with a lovely pastry which I think helped with the digestion.  Within 30 mins I had a lovely fuzzy glow which I'd not expected - kind of like I'd taken a lot of ibuprofen but without all the horrible side-effects. This was worth investigating!

In the Holland & Barrett a few doors down they had the Better You spray for Turmeric - half price at £12 as they are discontinuing it!  Probably because it has a tendency to go everywhere when you spray it - which is why there are yellow fingerprints all over this.

Spray in mouth - wait for effects!  Compared to the heap of powdered turmeric in the late this contains very little.  I suspect that the powder is a lot better value for money.

And while it is very convenient, it doesn't really have that massive effect that the first late did.  Useful though as it does make me feel a lot less fragile than I usually do which is a big bonus when you have a day that you want to be more active.

A week later I returned to Hello Café and had another Late (and one of the soft strawberry ice-creams). The effect wasn't quite as profound this time (no pastry to absorb it maybe) but it was still quite pleasing and took the edge off the day.

Naturally - if you are like me and on medications this doesn't replace them (in fact its always worth discussing with your consultant if you plan on doing this long term).  It also doesn't actually prevent the RA from doing the nasty damage that it tends to do - but it does help a lot with the inflammation.  As this is (in the right amounts) proven to be similar in effect to Ibuprofen (but without the IBS style symptoms that causes over time) I think I'll look into other ways of drinking it at home.

Easter Cronut - WhyNot? Coffee Bearwood (@Nli10)

 Puddings are yummy.  We miss not being able to eat out in cafe's so occasionally my partner picks up a cake to take away (people getting coffee to take away are doing it wrong) usually from Whynot? Coffee in Bearwood as it's near the good supermarket.

Today we got a cronut - which is a croissant mixed with a fried doughnut.  I'd much rather have one of each - but this is a nice hybrid.

You can tell it's an Easter cronut as they put things on top.

Mmmm - fresh coconut but not Cadbury mini-eggs!

And inside there is an amazing vanilla crème - the highlight of the whole thing!

Luxury puddings should not be a casualty of LockDown, but I'd prefer to sit and eat them there too.

Lorita's Bakehouse, Bromsgrove High St. (@NLi10) @LoritasBakehous

Bromsgrove has a very typically British high street at the moment.  The only things that can survive are the charity shops, the cheap shops and the boutique shops.  This suits me fine as I help out in the charity shop (Oxfam as usual), get my cheap lunch from the cheap shops, and then treat myself to nice things from the specialists.  Today is one of those treats as we popped into Lorita's Bakehouse (https://twitter.com/LoritasBakehous) for our lunch, and then decided that we could have some cakes for the afternoon too.  I don;t think I'd been in before as it's a few doors further than my usual place to sit and hide with TeaPigs and a hot sandwich, but it's good to try new places.  Both were very busy due to the rainy Saturday afternoon weather.



And I mean - who could pass up this selection! There is nothing on display here that I would have turned down, but after the amazing red marshmallow sensation last week I decided I'd take a slice of the raspberry and pistachio cheesecake and one of the banana custard slice.  We did share them between three of us (OK so I ate the most...)!

My partner's dirty cheese toasty is also worth an honourable mention - it was huge!  My smaller ciabatta was exactly what I needed, hot and tasty.



We took the cakes back to our shop and over the afternoon picked away at them.

So much cakey goodness!

A big problem with pretty puddings is that they never taste as good as they look, especially cupcakes, but here they are both as close as you can get.  I mean nothing could taste as good as the raspberry cheesecake looks, I don't think that's possible. On a bite per bite basis maybe the dark choc marshmallow bar was more to my taste, but this is a huge chunk of pudding and the milder, creamier flavour suits it more.  It's kind of like a milk jelly really, and actually tastes of pink (if that makes any sense).  The base is really well flavoured and the texture is soft but crumbly too.

Believe it or not though the banana custard slice was my favourite.  I loved this all, from the cunning use of the biscuits on the top (which naturally had gone a bit soft due to the moisture of the cream) to the real banana flavour of the base. It wasn't too sweet and had quite a deep, earthy taste which I loved.  I could imagine cutting the base into 9 little squares and having them next to a luxury coffee while the rain hammers on the cafe windows.

So, another place to add to the list of local cafe's to grab interesting things from when in Bromsgrove.  It's going to be hard to resist popping in again in two weeks time.

Cereal Killer Cafe - Birmingham @cerealkilleruk (@NLi10)

In the no-man's land between the Bullring and Grand Central, in an awkward little corner where the two disputed territories meet there is now a barricade of brightly coloured crates.  This creative distraction marks the edge of the Cereal Killer Cafe.

The idea of a cafe that serves predominantly cereal has been in London for a while, and merely laughed at through the pages of the Metro in the rest of the country.  Now we get to see just what kind of person is happy to have a bowl of cereal in public and pay for the privilege. 

Keen readers will know that I am one of their target market, and that I don't need an excuse to eat cereal for all meals.  For me it's not a fashionable hipster thing so much as a lifestyle choice.  While my partner intervened when the private stash hit 24 distinct cereals (not including back-ups of staple cereals like Cornflakes & Shreddies), I now tend to float around a more manageable 8, not including all the varieties of jam filled wheats that she has.

That said - I've tried a lot of the things on offer here, if not in all the odd varieties, so after a quick explore I decided to ask the staff to make a suggestion from the cocktail menu.

The first thing you notice (after the rather noisy Bullring shoppers) is the retro decorations.  These show that packaging really is a modern art form and there are many themed displays on offer.  These are all cereals based on other IP, mostly TV and movies, but with an odd Nerds cereal and a few toys on offer too.  I'm sure as with most of these kinds of things the money went on acquiring the licenses and the cereal was probably very underwhelming but the nostalgia hit is very real.  The Simpsons arcade machine is also a nice touch, but I avoided it as it's one of those games that you just have to finish once you start playing...

You can even eat cereal sitting on a child's bed.  I wasn't tempted.  The teenagers in the place seemed to love this idea so that's great as there were nice big tables for me.

Here is my Medium bowl of Don't Have a Cinnamon which is a cocktail of 3 different cereals, cinnamon toast crunch, apple jacks, curiously cinnamon with honey poured on top.  This would frankly be a great mix to eat dry as American cereals are closer to snack food than breakfast really.  I did however pour the dairy milk on top to get the full effect.  And it was pretty good - the apple really brought it together and the cinnamon is always a great taste.  A good option for a cereal based lunch.

They have lots of options for return visits to suit a variety of tastes and budgets, but due to the American style diner attitude there is a massive amount of sugar on offer and little else.  There are some bran and "raisans" options, but the reasonably healthy end of the shelf looked a little uninspired.  There are also Pop Tarts for when cold sugar isn't enough and you want it superheated and dangerous.  I'll surely try these on a future visit as like a lot of children of the 80s I wasn't allowed Pop Tarts when they launched. #DeprivedChild #FirstWorldProblems #TurnsOutTheyArentThatNice.  Luckily the CKC have American flavours so bacon Pop Tarts and similar will be amazing.  At least in theory.

They have the usual drinks and some huge shakes that were popular with the younger visitors on the beds.  I neglected to have a tea (as I was visiting my sister and tea was certainly in my future).

My meal together was £6 - but £2.20 of that was due to the Big Red, a drink i've not tried before and it's essentially a red Dr. Pepper.  Naturally, being American, it's made from High Fructose Corn Syrup which is really disappointing to anyone who has had actual sugar and survived.  Nice enough but not something I'd recommend.

As a sensible place to have lunch it fails on almost every level, but as a place that generates nostalgia and fun experiences I don't think you can beat it (short of going to the Cadbury Factory Cafe).  It has a mind boggling array of cereals (which only the most cynical and methodical would spot are mostly variants and just sugar) and frankly if I had the time and patience to go back and try all of the cocktails I would.  Someone has genuinely spent a lot of time mixing and tasting these and almost every odd-ball suggestion I could think of for these was on the menu in some form.  

You can have Banana Milk, Custard Milk, Chocolate Milk and all kinds of non-dairy options for people like me who are branching out.  I couldn't see a cocktail where they used fruit juice instead of milk, but I'm sure they did have one that was choc cereal and orange juice when I looked online (seriously - try cocopops/shreddies/orange juice).

If I were the harsh judge on the Cafe based reality show though my complaints would be that they just don't have some of the amazing Indy cereals that we have here in the UK.  Where was Lizi Shaw Granola? What about Bear! It's almost like they don't shop at Waitrose...  They did have some Dorset Cereal which is probably the market leader, but I expected them to have a weird little corner of things I'd never seen before.  I guess that the health conscious are really not the target market and it's about the treat experience so I really can't hold that against them. Brand names really are key, as Spiderman and Frozen cereals suggest.

It's a great place then, and somewhere we are already planning multiple trips back to.  My only hope is that they don't sell out of the few odd brands and variants that I do want to try before we make it there!

Paradice Gelato, Harborne [by @NLi10]

Yep, that's the name they went with. I think I'd be happier with the pun if it wasn't such a common mis spelling. Anyway - this is a new puddings cafe in our local Harborne high street and we thought we'd give it a try. We were surprised by the interior - very well done up considering it was a very run down shop before. It's all super modern and makes pretty good use of a very odd shaped unit - windows on both sides and seats all down the one wall.

Pink neon lighting and comfy chairs adds to the ambiance and the nice big tables mean that it'd be fine to hang out here for a while. Indeed there were lots of young families doing just that.

The food was also a delight - there were lots of different options to add on the crepes and waffles and there were suitably fun flavours of gelato to try.  We went for the following.

I had crepe with strawberry gelato, raspberry sauce and Jaffa cake. All nicely presented and decent sized amounts too. The gelato was suitably fruity, if not a bit cold for the early Jan weather. I could have piled it high if I were making it but I was full enough afterwards to have to ask for a bag to takeaway the extras I ordered below.

My partner had a banana biscotti gelato with chocolate sauce and some kind of biscuity sprinkle.  She also asked for no whipped cream so I took that off and put it onto mine. I think they have so many options the smart tills can't cope. Nothing wrong with a pen and a notepad!

The tea was £2.10 and £2.60 with a cookie so I ordered the decaf and added a raspberry white choc cookie. I thought it was a bit much for a teabag and hot water, but then this arrived.

It's loose leaf decaf tea! Amazing stuff and you got almost three cups worth. With the cookie this was a result. Good flavour and real leaves was a surprise, most places focus on the coffee not the tea.

As mentioned the main lunch was so good I saved the cookie for the next day, as expected this was good too. 

I also picked up a take away goodie for another review too, as they had some odd snacks I've not seen around.  All in all a nice new place and worth a trip if you find yourself nearby. And if you don't live anywhere near then I'm sure you also have a local independent desert style cafe that has cropped up so go visit and see what they do!