Eve’s Café,
Highway Garden Centre,
Yelverton,
Open Mon-Sat 9-5, Sun 10.30-4.30
Today was the first of a planned two day cafe cycle ride double header. For the first leg I had asked Andrew (who is notoriously hard to please) to join me on a loop down to Loddon before stopping at the Rockland St Mary's Post Office cafe. I had attempted this ride before with Chris (Mrs Crusader) in the summer but had failed when we discovered the cafe was closed on a Tuesday (see Toddler entertainment). As today was not a Tuesday I was confident of success so foolishly hadn't developed a plan b like I normally do. This turned out to be an embarrassing error which was to cause Andrew both physical pain and mental anguish.
Things started well as we set off in cold but refreshing conditions. Coincidently we had both gone to see utter nonsense Oscar film favourite Birdman at the cinema in the last week. On route Andrew explained why viewing this was not two hours of my life that I would never get back but a multi layered cinematic master piece. It was a convincing argument but clearly wrong so we continued to hold our own film review based bike ride until we arrived at our venue of Rocklands Post Office cafe.
On arrival I spotted a notice saying that the cafe was closed this week. This was terrible news as I had no alternative option. Just as panic was setting in the local postman appeared and came to our rescue. We engaged in chat about our ride and he shared his view on Birdman; "a group of very good actors wasted in an indulgent and pretentious script". I had to agree so asked if he knew of an alternative cafe venue. He suggested the garden centre on the main road to Beecles.
This sounded a good plan but I noticed Andrew had turned pale at the thought. Not only is he notoriously hard to please, a poor judge of films but a garden centre snob as well.
I persuaded him that it won't be that bad and I promised we would go straight to the cafe and not spend time browsing round the garden centre or gifts section. A few minutes later we found ourselves at the Highway garden centre which includes Eve's cafe.
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| Eve's cafe at the Highway garden centre |
After going through the compulsory Scottish woollens section we found Eve's cafe which had a huge seating area featuring both traditional tables and chairs plus comfy sofas. There were lots of people spread out around the inside seating area but it did feel a bit cafeteria.
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| Some of the available indoor seating at Eve's cafe |
However I was impressed by the cake selection as they had an excellent range of sponges, slices and scones. I awarded a high effective cake selection (ECS) rating.
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| Large selection of cakes |
I ordered Belgium chocolate cake and a cheese scone with my hot chocolate and Andrew a chocolate fruit slice, cheese scone and cappuccino. We were served by a very cheerful waitress who felt that Birdman had offered "by far the most fascinating meta-deconstruction of an actors ego" she had seen and she likes that sort of thing. Andrew agreed.
We choose to sit in the comfy sofa section at which point Andrew worked himself up into a full blown rant about garden centres. He got into such a state that he lost control of his limbs and sent his cappuccino flying causing coffee carnage and Andrew both physical pain and mental anguish
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| Coffee carnage |
After we finished mopping up and Andrew had calmed down, we got round to tasting. I thought my hot chocolate was good. However Andrew (who is notoriously hard to please) thought his coffee poor as it tasted a bit strange, this may have been as it had been squeezed out of a napkin but, unlike Birdman, I went with his view. Sadly the cheese scones were very poor. I always believe that to be called a cheese scone it is important that it has cheese in it and these ones didn't seemed to have followed this simple rule. To make matters worse they were served cold, a real no no. The cake and slice were much better bringing the cake quality rating up to something acceptable.
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| Cakes and drinks pre carnage |
Eve's cafe was not the best I've been too but we still found it to be a surprisingly relaxing stop and stayed ranting about pretentious films and garden centres for sometime before completing our journey home.
Scores for Eve's cafe
Hot
Choc Quality
|
Guest
Hot Drink Quality
|
Effective
Cake Selection
|
Cake
Quality
|
Ambiance
and Atmosphere
|
Café
Rating
|
6.0
|
5.0
|
8.0
|
5.5
|
5.0
|
5.9
|
Route
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