Amaretto Milk with Apple Pudding

Location: Queen Square Bar & Restaurant
www.queen-square.com
Date: Saturday 22 March, 2008, 10pm
Details: Apple cake with vanilla ice-cream; steamed milk with a shot of Amaretto

Notes: Queen Square is a warm and welcoming bar on the corner of a revamped park in the centre of Bristol, near my friend Duska's flat. We decamped here after dinner at a noisy tapas bar, for a more mellow pudding and coffee. My apple cake was good but more cake than apple. Steamed milk with a shot of Amaretto was a new idea but it's delicious! Highly recommended after-dinner drink.

Cup of hot chocolate with a raisin whirl

Location: YHA, Quayside, Bristol
www.yha.org.uk
Date: Sun 23 March, 2008, 8.30am
Details: Cup of hot chocolate with a raisin whirl

Notes: This breakfast was accompanied by reading The Observer and writing postcards, while waiting for my companions to get out of bed in the building around the corner.

Please admire the beautifully-stencilled heart on the hot choc. The pastry was bought in a Co-op and surrepticiously munched in the Youth Hostel. The cafe is a rustic-style cheap place inside the Bristol city centre Hostel, opposite lots of much more expensive bars. Free wifi. The cafe did become a bit overcrowded with schoolboy rugby tours but otherwise it was very nice!

Pot of hot chocolate with complementary cookies

Location: Welcombe Hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: Sun 9 March, 2008
Details: Hot chocolate with a selection of cookies

Notes: Hot choc in a pot! Very unusual. Cookies an unexpected bonus - they come free-of-charge, like peanuts on a bar. Sadly they were disappointing - dry, unexpected nasty coconut and blatantly out of a packet. Perhaps a Welcombe chef could knock up some simple biscuits in a quiet time? A great place for a quiet Sunday afternoon cuppa though - we had the whole lounge to ourselves with a view across the hills.

Assam tea with birthday cake

Location: Othello's, Stratford-upon-Avon

http://www.othellosbrasserie.co.uk/

Date: Sun 9 March, 2008

Details: Pot of Assam tea with a slice of Kiz's birthday cake

Notes: The cake is not Othello's produce, I'm sure they'd be horrified if anyone thought it was... It's a made-in-a-hurry effort by Sooze: Vic sponge with Kiz's homemade blackcurrant jam and buttercream, with icing and chocolate dot decoration on top. Light and fluffy cake with surprising filling. Tea: average and overpriced, but acceptable.

Tea and Victoria Sponge Cake

Location: Cox's Yard, Stratford

http://www.coxsyard.co.uk/

Date: Sat 16 Feb, 2008

Details: Tea and Victoria sponge

Notes: Once again, horrible Cox's Yard tea. But the Vic sponge was great - fresh and squishy.

Olde-worlde tea and chocolate slab

Location: Cox's Yard, Stratford http://www.coxsyard.co.uk/

Date: Sat 16 Feb, 2008

Details: Tea and chocolate slab

Notes: This was a truly awful pot of tea - possibly due to incorrect/inadequate teapot cleaning. Yuk. The choc slab was rather boring, not a patch on version sold in Chadds in Union Street, Stratford. The new decor in the Cox's Yard cafe is particularly naff 'olde-worlde' rose-covered tat. Yuk again. Squarely aimed at the tourists. Like the rose-bowl though, nice twee touch.

Assam tea with a heart-shaped cookie

Location: McKechnie's, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: Thurs 14 Feb, 2008
Details: Assam tea and a ginger heart+arrow cookie, made by Kiz.

Notes: A heart-shaped cookie for Valentines' Day! Kiz has since bought me this cookie cutter. :-) I've gone off the Assam tea at McKechnie's though - it has a slightly weird chemical finish. Back to the English Breakfast!