Tea and Little Cakes

Evening all,


Hello! Eleanor here, with the first proper post, and the first independent eatery review! On Saturday, we went for what was supposed to be a coffee and a cake, and ended up having a full blown brunch at Tea And Little Cakes! 


We stumbled across this little place on Timber Hill after having a slight disagreement about the quickest way to get to John Lewis. I was the winner, so we set off up Timber Hill, and thank goodness we did! 

Tea and Little Cakes

17 Timber Hill

Norwich 

Norfolk

NR1 3JZ

The restaurant has a lovely friendly feel about it, and was almost full when we arrived. The decor is a mix of modern and contemporary, with painted white beams, and farmhouse style dresser and tables. The kitchen at the back of the restaurant is open plan, and it was really good to see your food being cooked right in front of you! The menu's are super simple which I liked, just printed on card and clipped to a wooden clip board. I was also quite amused to see they have the same Bodum salt and pepper grinders we have a home...simple minds hey!

Tea and Little Cakes, or TALC, operates a full waitress service, and ours was very friendly, we ordered a green tea and a lemonade, and I was chuffed when the tea arrived in a pot with a vintage tea cup and saucer.

TALC serves a really good range of proper coffee, plenty of unusual soft drinks (like the yummy Luscombe sicilian lemonade we had), and Tea Pigs tea. The green one is one of the best I've had.

We then ordered our food. I went for scrambled eggs on sourdough (though I was really tempted by the Eggs Benedict), and D went for the  TALC Big Brekkie. 

The scrambled eggs were perfect! Not too wet, not dried out, and with a good amount of pepper. They were made even better when I pinched the hollandaise that came with D's big brekkie!

Breakfast perfection I think you'll agree! 2 sausages, bacon, grilled tomato, mushrooms, 2 poached eggs, TALC baked beans and sourdough, with hollandaise sauce. The homemade baked beans have totally inspired us to have a go at making our own, as I certainly won't be going back to Heinz in a hurry! 

They also had scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, the TALC veggie brekkie, beans or egg on sourdough toast, and croissants and pan au chocolat, oh and gluten free bread should you require it!

As you can imagine, we quickly gobbled the lot up...

D even ate his poached eggs, which until now he has maintained he doesn't like! 

I really loved the whole feeling of this little place. There were elderly couples, families, friends meeting for a drink, and kids in high chairs all happily eating breakfast together. When I went to the counter to pay, the chef came over to ask how we had found our food, all the staff were really friendly. I had a nose at the cakes available on the way out, and particularly like the look of a chocolate and Guinness number, and the HUGE croissants. We also flipped the menu over to have a peek at the evening offerings, and I can safely say we'll be returning for dinner very soon! 

Just a quick note from the other half really.  Sausage = Good, Bacon = Good, Baked Beans = amazing = poached eggs = good, sicilian lemonade = good, decor = good, staff = good, TALC = AMAZING. Thoroughly recommend this eatery in every way and I am excited to go back for cake and a meal. One thing, though, and I am being picky...the idea of TALC cooked food is a bit off-putting but as I said, I am being super picky and you would have to be a little silly to think anything would be cooked with talc.  Seriously hope the rest of the year's finds are as good as this one!

If you would like to visit Tea and Little Cakes, and we highly recommend you do, you can find it here:

Tea and Little Cakes

17 Timber Hill

Norwich 

Norfolk

NR1 3JZ

Much Love Eleanor and D 

xxx

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Hello Number 2!

Good evening everyone! How are you? My name is Eleanor, otherwise known as Ele, and you may recognise me from That is This and This is Heaven! My boyfriend D, and I have just started this blog to document our new years resolution to not eat in a chain establishment for the foreseeable future, and definitely not during 2012. D has explained the reasons for this pretty extensively here, so I won't say too much. I just wanted to bring a little colour to the proceedings...a post without pictures makes me nervous! 


Here's a tiny round up of our independent eatings from the past year or so:

I hope you will enjoy reading about our food adventure as much as we will undoubtedly enjoy going on it! 

Much love, Ele xxx

Hello!

Hello all, how are you?  Good? Good.

I am D.  I am sitting next to Eleanor at the moment.  It is the first of January 2012 and on September the 25th we both decided to try and eat and drink chain free.  Now as much as we would both like this to be all food, that just isn't really possible in our situation.  We do, however, eat and drink out a lot.  This came around as we have just moved back to Norfolk from four years at University in Leeds.  For three years while in Leeds, we ate in places we knew well and were familiar to us, the main two being Bagel Nash and Nando's.  Now don't get me wrong, I love them both, but I could go into Bagel Nash and ask for "the usual" and would get it (a mexican chicken  bagel, no avocado, on a cheese and jalepeno bagel) and Nando's was a pretty regular place for us, and if not for that, a texas barbecue double decadance with extra garlic and herb (it's really superb) sauce was a common Domino's Pizza order.  In our final year we decided to go into Pickles & Potter and I have to admit I have never eaten food like it in my life.  They served hot lunches, cake, a veggie option and the most amazing sandwiches we have both ever tasted.  My sandwich of choice was a piri piri chicken sandwich in focaccia bread, and Eleanor's choice was rare beef, brie and onion marmalade in wholemeal bread.  I have to admit, my descriptions of these sandwiches do it very little justice.  They were the most amazing mouthfuls of food I have ever tasted.  I never had a bad meal in that place.  It was tiny, and packed nine times out of ten, but everything tastes SO amazing.  The sandwiches came with a fork full of grated carrot.  I am not a fan of raw carrot but when it is grated, and dressed with what we guessed to be poppy seeds, lemon and maybe an oil, probably extra virgin, it was unbelievable.  They also did amazing salads that were vibrant and a pleasure to the eye that danced on my tastebuds.  The cake they had...well...the cake.  There were two for me.  Coffee and Pecan cake, which was slightly dry, but in an amazing way.  I could literally eat a whole cake's worth, as in a massive cake.  But the second was the chocolate brownie.  Since being small, and baking with mum to now and baking because I fancy cake, the best part of chocolate brownie was the crispy bits, then licking the uncooked batter from the bowl.  Somehow P&P managed to do just that in one cake.  It got so bad that when I went back up to Leeds recently to hand some work in I only just resisted the urge to go in and buy a lot of it to bring home.  My one regret with Pickles and Potter is not finding them sooner, as I am sure they would have taken over from the few chains we used to frequent.

So I am sure you are wondering how finding this place has made us give up chain food and drink establishments for a year.  Well I found myself in Norwich the other day walking past a lot of really lovely looking cafes and restaurants and found myself saying "That looks nice," and walking to Costa and buying a drink.  There is a heck of a lot of small independent little places that I am sure are as amazing and Pickles and Potter (although they will be hard pushed!).

So that's the plan.  Discover local gems, eat independent food, and see how we get on.  I will now make a list of places that I want to try and blog about.

The Bicycle Shop, Norwich - I met a friend there for a drink and the food looked lovely.
The Quayside Plaza, Great Yarmouth - My mother and I have been in looking at their handmade goods, and their cafe looked great.

And to be honest that is where I struggle.  There's a restaurant or two that I would love to try, some that I see and forget, and some, like Jimmy's Farm, which we just have not got around to eating at yet.

I am looking forward to it though.  It will be nice.  Have to admit, not even a day in and I miss Domino's Pizza already...sigh.

Right-o.  That'll do.  Will write again when I go somewhere new.

D