Banoffee cheesecake, petit-fours and cup of tea

Location: McKee's Brasserie, Haig's Hotel, Balsall Common
Date: 1 April 2010
Details: Banoffee cheesecake, petit-fours and cup of tea

Notes: A birthday outing for my mother's sixtieth. Haig's Hotel in Balsall Common is becoming a word-of-mouth success for the retired Solihull population. McKee's Brasserie offers a three-course menu every day (£12 lunch, £19 dinner) - there's a wide choice of meat, fish and veggie options and the menu changes monthly. So for a birthday lunch, this was superb value.

The banoffee cheesecake was a toffee cheesecake in disguise - a few slices of banana on the top cunningly transforming it into 'banoffee' - strange, but tasty enough. The 'chocolate sauce' promised on the menu was a few dribbles of toffee sauce - strange, but tasty enough again.

The petit-fours were very strange - cute to look at but very strange to eat. Some seemed to be solid coconutty mixtures, some were miniature pastries or biscuits. Best to just admire these, rather than actually eat them.

Pretty tea cups

Location: The Beeches Bar & Grill, Hampton-in-Arden
Date: 1 April 2010
Details: Tea in pretty cups




Notes: No cake sadly - we were about to go out for lunch - but a jolly nice cup of tea and small biscotti. I took a photo to record the pretty tea-cups. Very nice.


The Beeches is a relatively new restaurant in Hampton-in-Arden - it's been open a year or so now. The walls are covered in huge images of happy Fresian cows in vivid green fields with brilliant blue skies. So presumably it's a vegetarian restaurant? Surely no-one could eat steak in here...?

Easter cupcake and green tea

Location: At desk in office, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: 29 March 2010
Details: Easter cupcake and green tea




Notes: Light plain sponge cupcake with yellow lemon icing. These cupcakes were left on a table in our upstairs hallway, we're not quite sure who made them but suspect Rachel in HR. All the cakes had an Easter chick sitting on top - mine is now sitting in my pot plant.

Cup of tea and Victoria Sponge cake

Location: Red Lion pub, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: 28 March 2010
Details: Cup of tea and Victoria Sponge cake

Notes: A great place to meet Kiz and baby Islay, this pub was almost deserted in the late afternoon. The coffee (see below) is standard Costa stuff, here nicely decorated with a star stencil. The Vic sponge could be described as 'McDonalds-y' because it's very perfect-looking, all neat edges and perfectly-piped buttercream. Perfectly-piped presumably because it was done by a machine. The sponge was more like a bath sponge so I chopped most of that off and ate the middle bit. Naughty! But nice.

Jasmine Green tea and Eton Mess

Location: Benson's Tea-room, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: 27 March 2010
Details: Jasmine Green tea and Eton Mess

Notes: It goes without saying that the tea was perfect - a cup of tea will always be top notch at Benson's. With 80+ varieties of tea, Benson's know their stuff - no basic mistakes like incorrectly cleaned teapots here, no way. Most cafes concentrate on their coffee with tea as an after-thought, just a sorry-looking tea-bag slung into a cup. At Benson's, the tea is designed and prepared by people who care.

It would be a nice adventure-in-tea to taste my way through their tea menu each time I visit, but I like Jasmine Green tea too much to do that. The only blip with Benson's is their newer staff who require proper training about the menu and about tea.

The choice of Eton Mess was down to Polly, an American MA student at the Shakespeare Institute, who had never tried this very English dessert despite living in Stratford for 1.5 years. Americans often cite trifle as a quintessentially English pud and Eton Mess would be in the same family of puddings. Benson's version was very straightforward: cream, merigue and fresh strawberries - simply the basics but simply delicious. Hopefully Polly's now regularly making this pud with her young American cousins.

Green tea and carrot cake

Location: Bard's Tea-room, Antiques Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: 15 March 2010
Details: Green tea and carrot cake


Notes: The proper china cups! The dainty real ceramic teapot! The just-iced homemade carrot cake!
It's cuppa-and-cake perfection.

This tea-room inside the musty and slightly ramshackle Antiques Centre on Ely Street in Stratford is a hidden gem. Usually it's peopled by pensioners on day-trips to Stratford while those with delusion of hip-ness prefer to be seen in Costa, Starbucks and so on. If you've bypassed this place before, give it a try - it was recently taken over by a new manager and team who are keen to impress with a simple menu and honest home-cooking (the kitchen actually looks like a home kitchen, complete with pine cupboards).

On this occasion - in need of a sugar-hit after a tattoo sitting with Az at Deviant (D~viant) upstairs at the Centre - I had a slab of the ginger cake (Delia Smith recipe; open texture but sticky with chunks of stem ginger inside and on top) and was pleased that the café offers green tea. Refills of tea and coffee are free. Fantastic!

This place is brilliant. I insist you there at once. In fact, take my bicycle. Tell Janey that Suzanne sent you.

Tea and petit-fours

Location: McKee's Brasserie, Haig's Hotel, Balsall Common
Date: 5 March 2010
Details: Tea and petit-fours

Notes: See post on 1 April for more about Haig's and McKee's Brasserie.