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.